This study examines the role that Michelangelo’s letters have played
in biographies of the artist. It focuses on two periods — the Renaissance and
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the latter witnessing an
outpouring of biographies on Michelangelo. The first section of the study
examines the way in which Giorgio Vasari edited the letters he received from
Michelangelo in his 1568 vita of the sculptor. In
the second section I analyze how the availability of the letters, through a
long and fitful process, influenced the way in which biographers from John S.
Harford to Giovanni Papini characterize Michelangelo and his
world.