Awards
2010 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
Cammy Brothers, Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture
Cammy Brothers (photograph by Michel Boulet and © Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal)
When one considers the vast bibliography on Michelangelo, it is a tribute to Cammy Brothers that her book is such a readable and masterful work of new scholarship and substantial insight into both the artist’s working methods and his modes of thinking. Remarkably erudite, Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) marshals compelling visual evidence along with literary, historical, and philosophical support on behalf of a fresh and persuasive argument.
Brothers makes the bold assertion that the very technique of drawing is dynamic: changing in response to particular historical conditions as well as in relation to the function and form of specific projects. Specifically, she propounds an unimpeachable and impeccable argument on behalf of analyzing the artist’s architecture in relation to his drawing practice, in which figural works provide especially compelling evidence for new interpretations for his building designs.
Among the important points Brothers convincingly demonstrates are that Michelangelo applied the same approach to drawing architectural elements as he did when drawing the human figure and that he transformed ancient Roman elements by applying the same drawing methods he used in his major figural compositions. She also shows how these methods relate to various aspects of the artist’s career as architect, painter, and sculptor.
This handsome and well-illustrated book enhances our understanding of the work of Michelangelo, while also pointing the way to new approaches to the study of the visual arts generally.
Jury: David Sokol, University of Illinois, Chicago, chair; Suzanne Blier, Harvard University; Elizabeth Mansfield, New York University; Perri Lee Roberts, University of Miami; and Benjamin Withers, University of Kentucky.
