You might also like

More about Dreaming of Michelangelo

• Book details
• Synopsis
• Trending among others

You get 197 loyalty points

Book synopsis

"Dreaming of Michelangelo" is the first book-length study to explore the intellectual and cultural affinities between modern Judaism and the life and work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. It argues that Jewish intellectuals found themselves in the image of Michelangelo as an unrequited lover whose work expressed loneliness and a longing for humanity's response. The modern Jewish imagination thus became consciously idolatrous. Writers brought to lifeOColiterallyOCoMichelangelo's sculptures, seeing in them their own worldly and emotional struggles. The Moses statue in particular became an archetype of Jewish liberation politics as well as a central focus of Jewish aesthetics. And such affinities extended beyond sculpture: Jewish visitors to the Sistine Chapel reinterpreted the ceiling as a manifesto of prophetic socialism, devoid of its Christian elements. According to Biemann, the phenomenon of Jewish self-recognition in Michelangelo's work offered an alternative to the failed promises of the German enlightenment. Through this unexpected discovery, he rethinks German Jewish history and its connections to Italy, the Mediterranean, and the art of the Renaissance.

Book details

Book category Books in English Society & social sciences Society & culture: general Social groups

• Full title: Dreaming of Michelangelo
• Subtitle: Jewish Variations on a Modern Theme
• Author: Asher Biemann
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardback
• Number of pages: 200
• EAN: 9780804768818
• ISBN: 0804768811
• ID: 04718815
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Weight: 363 g
• Dimensions: 216 × 140 × 25 mm
• Date of publishing: 14. November 2012

Trending among others

---

---

---