Excerpt from Michelangelo by Miles J. Unger, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Michelangelo was fully complicit in the project to turn his life into legend. His earliest biographers, Condivi and Vasari, were younger colleagues who stood in awe of the great man and were only too happy to promote him as a demigod who trafficked in only the most profound truths. The writer Anton Francesco Doni remarked, as if it were common knowledge: "And certainly I take you to be a God," though he added the disclaimer, "but with license from our faith." Others took up the torch as well. In his epic poem Orlando Furioso, Ludovico Ariosto puns on the artist's name, calling him "Michel, più che mortale, Angelo divino" (Michael, more than mortal man, angel divine), though what began as praise could be turned by his enemies into a source of derision. The equally distinguished Pietro Aretino, smarting from a perceived insult at the hands of the artist, wrote a letter in which he sneered at "that Michelangelo of stupendous fame  . . . who since you are divine do not deign to consort with men," proving that a social-climbing man of letters could be every bit as touchy as an insecure artist.

Michelangelo's conception of himself as a superior being was not based solely, or perhaps even principally, on his immense talent. As his letter to his nephew reveals, it sprang initially from his pride in belonging to an ancient and noble lineage. "[H]ere I'm known only as Michelangelo Buonarroti," he boasts, as if it is the family name rather than his profession that best defines him. Obsessed with upholding the family honor, he cannot embrace the title of sculptor or painter, which he associates with degraded manual labor. The priest's error is not that he looked down on the great majority of artists, but rather that he associated him with that lowly breed.

Driven to become an artist, a profession he knew was beneath his dignity, Michelangelo simply redefined the term. Ironically, the new reality Michelangelo himself helped bring about makes his anxiety about the family pedigree seem faintly ridiculous. The Buonarroti would long ago have faded into obscurity were it not for the famous artist who bore that name, a reversal of the natural order to which Michelangelo never fully reconciled himself.

II. THE PAINTER'S APPRENTICE

Michelangelo's decision to become an artist sprang from a deep need, but his restless ambition and his irritable pride were fueled as much by the circumstances of his birth, or at least the circumstances as he understood them, since the basis of his family's claims to nobility was as much a product of hope as of cold-eyed realism. Michelangelo di Lodovico di Buonarroti Simone was born on March 6, 1475, in the provincial village of Caprese, where his father, Lodovico, was serving a term as the mayor. In a typically dry entry, Lodovico marked the momentous occasion in his Ricordanza: "I record that today, this 6th day of March, 1474, a son was born to me. I named him Michelangelo. He was born on Monday morning 4 or 5 hours before daybreak while I was Podestà at Caprese. . . . He was baptized on the 8th day of said month in the Church of Santo Giovanni at Caprese."

Michelangelo was the second of what would ultimately grow into a brood of five boys, each of whom would come to depend on their famous brother to one degree or another. It is ironic that the child who defied his father to become an artist turned out to be the one effectual breadwinner among the lot. It was Michelangelo's wealth and fame that sustained the family when those who chose more conventional careers faltered.

Lodovico was both proud and poor, traits that left an indelible mark on his second son. It was from his father that Michelangelo inherited an obsession with the dignity of the family name and a horror of anything that could be seen as dragging the Buonarroti down to that low estate to which outward appearance suggested they already belonged. Early on, the young Michelangelo and his four brothers learned that, though they were barely scraping by, the Buonarroti were not only a distinguished Florentine clan, but that they were descended from perhaps the most famous dynasty in all of Tuscany: the counts of Canossa. Throughout his long life Michelangelo set great store by this connection. Ironically, Michelangelo's fame in a socially suspect profession meant that the current head of the clan, Count Alessandro, was only too happy to acknowledge the dubious connection, addressing his correspondence to "my much beloved and honored kinsman messer Michelangelo da Canossa worthy sculptor." Near the end of his life Michelangelo tried to impress upon his nephew the importance of this honor, recalling how the count "once came to visit me in Rome as a relative."

Excerpted from Michelangelo by Miles J Unger. Copyright © 2014 by Miles J Unger. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.