Roth Reviews Barkan’s ‘Michelangelo: A Life on Paper’

In a review for The Washington Post, Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth discusses the new book by Leonard Barkan: Michelangelo: A Life on Paper. While volumes have been written about the great artist and his work, Roth says this book is different and intriguing because of its perspective. “It focuses…on the artist’s ‘life on paper,’ the hundreds of sheets that have survived containing drawings, poems, doodles, instructions to assistants and ‘notes to self.’ For Barkan, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton, these sheets are a treasure trove of aesthetic delights; traces of the historical context of Renaissance art making; and, most important, a window onto the personality and artistic practice of a figure who came to define genius.”