Agony and the Ecstasy (Paperback)

Full of medieval intrigue and colour, The Agony and the Ecstasy is a biographical novel which transports us to Renaissance Florence in Italy, where a teenage Michelangelo is received into apprenticeship by an old man with an eye for talent. He grows up to be an artist driven by his love of art, his desire to immitate nature to the point where the distinction between reality and fabrication blurs. His time is one of turbulence, when the Medici family holds sway over the city, and the women in his life play a prominent role in his development as artist. A galloping read and an insight into the life and times of one of the world's greatest artists. (Kirkus UK)

This is Stone's finest novel and the just announced selection as April B-O-M, will give it added impetus. Even without that, the subject matter- Michelangelo and the burgeoning period which gave him life- and Stone's proven ability to convey the excitement and passion of genius (as in Lust for Life) would guarantee an immense and eager audience. It's an enormous book, in scope, in historical background, in depth perception and characterization. Charles H. Morgan's The Life of Michelangelo (Viking- Reynal) never quite came to grips with the man. He remained much less fully realized than his tremendous body of work (see report-1960-p. 319). Sidney Alexander's novel, Michelangelo, the Florentine (Random House- see report 1957, p. 656), while absorbing and fascinating reading, never gave one a sense of the whole man. De Tolnay's definitive six volume Michelangelo (Princeton University Press) is beyond the pocketbook of the general reader, but Stone's book may well provide the opening wedge to further study. It is an extraordinary achievement, both in bringing the greatest period of the Renaissance in Italy into vivid personal being, and in clarifying the complex political situation, the interplay of personalities in Florence and in Rome as Savonarola injected a spirit of fear and fanaticism, as the Medicis and the Borgias battled for papal control in Rome, as extravagance was followed by penury and back again. Against this surging, many threaded setting, Michelangelo emerges, with his strange and difficult personality, his courage and independence, his lifelong slavery to his demanding family, and his complete identification with his own many-sided genius. Sculpture was his goal, his god, his driving force, but, faced with necessity, he proved himself equally gifted in the incredible achievement of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the architectural triumph of St. Peter's, and even as an engineer. Irving Stone writes out of intimate personal acquaintance with the marble quarries, the studios of sculptors - and one finds almost exhausting identification with Michelangelo's tortuous performance. It's an immensely long novel - but fully rewarding on every count. (Kirkus Reviews)

A fictional biography of the artist Michelangelo Buonarotti. It is also a vivid recreation of renaissance Italy, evoking the turbulence of a time when the Medici family and the Church were all powerful. Stone's previous books on the art world include "Lust for Life: the Life of Vincent Van Gogh".