Sarah Vowles

Tracing the final 30 years of Michelangelo’s career, this book examines how the great master used art and faith to explore the common human experience of ageing in a rapidly changing world. Michelangelo was not the isolated, tortured genius of artistic legend but a man who maintained a close circle of friends and associates into old age. His late drawings, letters and poetry offer powerful insights into his psychology, reflecting his Catholic faith, his commanding intellectual engagement, and his hope for eternal life. Built on the British Museum’s extraordinary collection of drawings, this book explores Michelangelo’s relationships and late creativity to go beyond the towering Renaissance master known today.

The first exploration of Piranesi's work as a draughtsman, published to coincide with an exhibition at the British Museum. The Venetian-born artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) is best known for his dramatic prints of the architecture and antiquities of his adopted city of Rome, and for the extraordinary flights of spatial fancy in his series Le Carceri (Prisons). But he was also an astonishingly talented draughtsman, as revealed in this outstanding collection of drawings at the British Museum. This book explores the relationship between Piranesi's drawings and prints, and reveals the way in which his style and interests as a draughtsman evolved over time. Some are spontaneous 'primi pensieri', first thoughts that anticipate a bigger work; others explore more complex exercises in perspective and spatial representation. Piranesi drawings reveals the quality and lasting impact of the work of this remarkably influential artist.