Joost Keizer. Review of "Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing" by Deborah Parker and "Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame, 1475–1534" by Michael Hirst.

Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Subject of Art

“…After wandering to Venice, Bologna, and Rome, he returned to Florence in the spring of 1501, when he started to work for patrons tied to the politics of the Governo Popolare. 119 But a true symbolic close of Lorenzo's politics of artistic education did not occur until the summer of 1505, when Michelangelo's Cascina cartoon was installed in the symbolic heart of the government that had replaced not only Lorenzo's politics but also his cultural program. With Michelangelo working in the service of the Florentine Republic, receiving a regular income as a republican court artist of sorts, his art was to set a new direction for Florence's visual future, aimed to eclipse Lorenzo's cultural hegemony.…”