Michelangelo's Gifts

Michelangelo's Gifts tells the story of the artist's most intimate relationships and his deepest political commitments in the last decades of his life. The first study in over forty years of his relationship with his beloved, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, and the first in English, it is also the first comprehensive investigation of Michelangelo's gift-giving practices. Maria Ruvoldt here examines the evolution of Michelangelo's gift-giving strategies and their meanings from 1532, when Michelangelo's introduction to Cavalieri initiated his most extensive cycle of gifts of drawings and poetry, to the artist's death in 1564, which was preceded by a series of politically motivated gifts, including large-scale sculptures. Ruvoldt argues that Michelangelo's gift-giving was a response to the forces that shaped his career. She demonstrates that we can locate the origins of contemporary ideas about artistic autonomy, celebrity, and what constitutes an authentic work of art through the history of the creation and reception of Michelangelo's gifts.