Oil And Marble A Novel Of Leonardo And Michelangelo

In her brilliant debut, Storey brings early 16th-century Florence alive, entering with extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of two Renaissance masters, creating a stunning art history thriller. From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself. Michelangelo is a virtual unknown when he returns to Florence and wins the commission to carve what will become one of the most famous sculptures of all time: David. Even though his impoverished family shuns him for being an artist, he is desperate to support them. Living at the foot of his misshapen block of marble, Michelangelo struggles until the stone finally begins to speak. Working against an impossible deadline, he begins his feverish carving. Meanwhile, Leonardo's life is falling apart: he loses the hoped-for David commission; he can't seem to finish any project; he is obsessed with his ungainly flying machine; he almost dies in war; his engineering designs disastrously fail; and he is haunted by a woman he has seen in the market--a merchant's wife, whom he is finally commissioned to paint. Her name is Lisa, and she becomes his muse. Leonardo despises Michelangelo for his youth and lack of sophistication. Michelangelo both loathes and worships Leonardo's genius. Oil and Marble is the story of their nearly forgotten rivalry. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction--novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

"From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself. The two despise each other."--Front jacket flap.

Two of the Renaissance’s most famous artists battle to be the best in Rome in this gripping historical novel by the author of Oil and Marble. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most iconic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here, in Raphael, Painter in Rome, Storey tells of its creation as never before: through the eyes of Michelangelo’s fiercest rival—the young, beautiful, brilliant painter of perfection, Raphael. Orphaned at age eleven, Raphael is determined to keep the deathbed promise he made to his father: become the greatest artist in history. But to be the best, he must beat the best, the legendary sculptor of the David, Michelangelo Buonarroti. When Pope Julius II calls both artists down to Rome, they are pitted against each other: Michelangelo painting the Sistine Ceiling, while Raphael decorates the pope’s private apartments. As Raphael strives toward perfection in paint, he battles internal demons: his desperate ambition, crippling fear of imperfection, and unshakable loneliness. Along the way, he conspires with cardinals, scrambles through the ruins of ancient Rome, and falls in love with a baker’s-daughter-turned-prostitute who becomes his muse. With its gorgeous writing, rich settings, endearing characters, and riveting plot, Raphael, Painter in Rome brings to vivid life these two Renaissance masters going head-to-head in the deadly halls of the Vatican. “As the plot thickens, intrigue and political machinations simmer, and the result is a rich and delicious portrayal of art and its creators and the forces that drive and often work against them. More than twenty-five years of research in Italian Renaissance art deepens the story and renders it full of fascinating detail about people and process, while Storey’s painterly prose is also sure to delight art lovers and fans of historical fiction.” —Booklist “A warm, witty, mesmerizing portrait of the Renaissance’s most famous painters: the charming Raphael and the irascible Michelangelo, dueling for the title of greatest artist in Rome. . . . A feast for the senses, every brushstroke a delight.” —Kate Quinn, New York Times–bestselling author of The Diamond Eye “Storey takes one of the most towering figures of the Renaissance and seats him across a tavern table from the reader. Raphael’s voice is as vibrant and colorful as one of his paintings.” —Alyssa Palombo, author of The Borgia Confessions

New York City is obsessed with food. Especially in the streets of The Quarter, every imaginable delicacy is made and devoured, every unspeakable hunger is fulfilled. Talia, a recent divorcee, comes to The Quarter to be reborn. She discovers fresh purpose in the sensual pleasures there, and a possible new love. But eventually she finds herself face to face with the darkness under its surface-in both the privileged patrons who feast there, and the third-world laborers who feed them. Now Talia must separate the truth from the madness because in The Quarter, the haves and have-nots are about to face a reckoning. "Utterly absorbing...It's a wild feast for the senses that reads as if Margaret Atwood and Gordon Ramsay met in a kitchen somewhere to cook up this story together."-Stephanie Storey, author of Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo "A startling, seductive story voiced by a complex heroine, sage in its subversive candor and nuanced treatment of our time of plenty."-Ilan Mochari, author of Zinsky the Obscure "Delman guides us like a culinary Virgil through a surreal inferno exposing our contemporary culture of indulgence."-Joshua Gaylord, author of When We Were Animals

Classic Book Reviews and Timely Stories By: Charles J. Scott We all want to learn from perceptive, intelligent, and experienced individuals we admire so that we may live better lives ourselves. Obviously, we need good guidance and a positive influence on our thought processes for this purpose. That's why we read great books from knowledgeable sources and listen to our role models. Because he likes to reflect on the books he has read and incorporate the favorable impressions they have made on him into his daily activities, author Charles Scott developed the habit of writing a series of book reviews and short stories to commemorate the occasion. The reviews have provided him with a diving platform, or a jumping-off point of departure, for making sound decisions and evaluating his actions. Consequently, the resulting stories represent a celebration of the life and times in which he has lived. They are meant to celebrate humanity in an otherwise uncertain world throughout the ages.

Even when your job can be done from anywhere, the place you call home still matters—a lot. By the old rules of work, your dream career determines where you live. If you want to make movies, move to Los Angeles. If you want to work in publishing, you must be in New York. And if you're launching a start-up, you'll only succeed in Silicon Valley. But with the meteoric rise of remote and freelance work, more people than ever are becoming location independent. Even doctors, teachers, and other people in more traditional occupations have to make tough choices about where they settle, because living in the right place can still make all the difference for your success and happiness. So if work won't dictate where you live, how will you ever decide? If You Could Live Anywhere answers that question. Melody Warnick unpacks the big-picture concerns that we often miss when we're writing pros-and-cons lists about potential destinations. Because the secret to being happy isn't moving, it's aligning your location with your values. You'll learn how to craft a personal location strategy that will make the most of your money, your community, and your life, with success stories from people who flexed their location independence to find homes and work they love. The future of work is clear: it can happen wherever you are. So where do you really want to be?

Essays on computer art and its relation to more traditional art, by a pioneering practitioner and a philosopher of artificial intelligence. In From Fingers to Digits, a practicing artist and a philosopher examine computer art and how it has been both accepted and rejected by the mainstream art world. In a series of essays, Margaret Boden, a philosopher and expert in artificial intelligence, and Ernest Edmonds, a pioneering and internationally recognized computer artist, grapple with key questions about the aesthetics of computer art. Other modern technologies—photography and film—have been accepted by critics as ways of doing art. Does the use of computers compromise computer art's aesthetic credentials in ways that the use of cameras does not? Is writing a computer program equivalent to painting with a brush? Essays by Boden identify types of computer art, describe the study of creativity in AI, and explore links between computer art and traditional views in philosophical aesthetics. Essays by Edmonds offer a practitioner's perspective, considering, among other things, how the experience of creating computer art compares to that of traditional art making. Finally, the book presents interviews in which contemporary computer artists offer a wide range of comments on the issues raised in Boden's and Edmonds's essays.

The Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico is a master of metaphysical painting. This fully illustrated catalogue presents de Chirico's work in relation to the world and myths of classical antiquity.