Note to Readers W hat if someone wanted to write a biography about you without ever talk ing to you Maybe they have some of your e-mails have seen you a few times and can read what you post on social media They might even be able talk to someone who knows you Do you think their biography will be accurate It might come very close to the truth but it will always be incomplete Writing a biography with insufficient information represents a great challenge for an author This is always the case in varying degrees when authors write about someone who is now dead especially if this person lived many cen turies ago Authors read letters written by or to the person direct correspondence or about the person indirect correspondence and look for any other documents they can find birth marriage and death certificates wills bank statements and even shopping lists They also read about the times and loca tions in which their subject lived and study biographies of other people who lived in simi lar historical and socioeconomic conditions Then they try to put all the pieces of the puzzle together Of course authors base much of their work on the writings of other biographers especially those who lived at the same time or just after their subject They look at how other biogra phers interpreted the same information and compare their conclusions keeping in mind that biographies become less reliable as we go back in time because fairness and accuracy have not always been as important as they are today The same challenges face those who want to study Michelangelo’s life His early life was not well documented even though two of his biographies were written while he was still alive something extremely unusual at that time One of these biographies was authored vi
by his friend and fellow artist Giorgio Vasari and the other by his pupil Ascanio Condivi Condivi’s biography was practically dictated by Michelangelo Since these works were written by men who knew him well modern biographers may ini tially think they are reliable sources In reality later research has discovered many inaccura cies in these writings Michelangelo himself covered up modified or embellished some facts for different reasons While these biog raphies remain the starting point for any seri ous study of the artist they need to be taken with a grain of salt You can keep this in mind when you see them quoted in this book The great variety of opinions and interpre tations of Michelangelo’s life art and poetry is however far from discouraging And this exciting field of discovery is enriched by the unusually large number of letters and docu ments by to and about Michelangelo This is probably why so many have tried to discover the true Michelangelo and why the search is still open even to you vii
