Month: July 2020

If Michelangelo’s first biographers described his achievements as nothing short of divine, the man himself was beset throughout his life with mortal worries. They only increased with age. He was seventy-five when his protégé Giorgio Vasari described him in 1550 as sent down by Heaven to redeem art from its “endless futility,” “passionate but fruitless zeal, and the presumptuous opinions of mortals, more distant from truth than darkness from light.” Fortunately, as Vasari saw it, … Ingrid D. Rowland – He (Michelangelo) Made Stone SpeakRead more

Barbara Newhall Follett was a prodigy who transfixed the literary world—and then vanished. In a New Hampshire apartment during the winter of 1923, this typewritten notice was fastened squarely against a closed door: Nobody may come into this room if the door is shut tight (if it is shut not quite latched it is all right) without knocking. The person in this room if he agrees that one shall come in will say “come in,” … Paul Collins – Vanishing ActRead more