MICHELANGELO, THE MAN

By Donald L. Finlayson '19. Thomas Crowel) 356 pp., 20 full-page illustrations.

Michelangelo is one of the most written-about men in history. There are at least eleven biographies of him in English, and there must be twice as many in other languages. During the open season, just before the war, six works appeared in as many two volumes by John Addington Symonds, and the superb interpretation of his art by no less a person than Romain Rolland. The first reaction is: why another book on Micfielangelo? One must be bold indeed to invade so well-fenced a field.

Mr. Finlayson's boldness is amply justified in the success of his announced intention to present Michelangelo more as a man than as an artist. It is taken for granted that Michelangelo's works of art either are already well-known or that they speak for themselves, and the reader is spared both fulsome panegyrics and tiresome controversies on attributions, in order to emphasize the life of the man himself and the surroundings and exciting events through which he moved. For this reason it is easily the most interesting book on Michelangelo that we have, particularly because it is so rich in its historical setting. The consecutive fitting-together of a complex pattern of events to give us a vivid sense of the age and its personalities is admirable.

The personal interpretation of Michelangelo the Man seems a bit too lenient. Doubtless his life and work were much affected by the turbulence of his environment, but to interpret his whole tragic sense of life to the persecution of all manner of knaves and rascals seems too simple. It seems more likely that it was the result of conflicts within himself-or at least partially so—and that a thorough psychoanalytical approach might shed new light on what is at best a baffling problem in personality.