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Robert S. Liebert has given us a masterful biography of Michelangelo. His writing is clear, often poetical; his scholarship, always solid. For his skeletal information, Liebert wisely relied heavily on the two editions of Vasari, the Wohl translation of the Condivi, and the Ramsden translation of the letters. By avoiding the standard secondary biographies, Liebert has reduced to a minimum the apocryphal tales and romanticized versions of Michelangelo's life, relationships, and art pieces. Liebert's reliance on solid sources allows him to avoid the confusion, the contradictory opinions, and the whole host of inaccuracies that can become a morass to anyone attempting to thread through the extraordinary life of this genius.
Whereas Liebert wisely avoids secondary bibliographic sources, he fully embraces the vast art history scholarship regarding Michelangelo's works. His sources of information about the oeuvre cross the gamut of the great students of Michelangelo particularly those available in English translation. He fully uses Hibbard, Steinberg, Steinmann, Wilde, and Wind, although in ways not explained, de Tolnay's monumental five-volume study by comparison seems under-represented. For reasons also not clarified, Liebert seems leery of the large scholarship that exists about Michelangelo's poetry and the artistic quality of the poetry, itself. Nonetheless, Liebert's biography of Michelangelo is one of the most carefully thought out and keenly researched of any yet published.
The organization is masterful, proceeding chronologically. Yet, Liebert's emphasis is not on dates but on an intermingling of artistic work, socio-political predicaments, and major influences. The result is a full view of the personal development of a difficult, temperamental, frequently depressed, agonizing, lonely, unsizably creative man responding to, buffeted by, and, at the same time, being a part of some of the most significant social, political, artistic, and philosophical change