I had the pleasure of being in Professor Goffen's Italian High Renaissance class in the early 90's. She was a terrific professor, a true life force in the class room, and anyone who was lucky enough to have learned from her will never forget her. Sadly, she has since passed on, but her great intellect and love of her area of expertise live on in her definitive volume on Bellini, and in this book. A tremendous achievement.

Goffen has provided a clear, engaging, and refreshing view of Michelangelo and allows for further study and questioning.

I do want to make a remark regaring the review called "Qualified Praise." Goffen does not state that Michelangelo died in 1566. She adheres to the February 17, 1564 date:

"Instead, Vasari paraphrased an anecdote reported by an unknown correspondent, writing within a month of Michelangelo's death on 17 February 1564." (p. 117).

Goffen's book is a powerful and thrilling volume of scholarship. Having passed away of breast cancer, the author rests knowing that her words and scholarship will continue to delight and inform many people desiring a new take on the overly discussed pieces of Michelangelo and his "antagonists."

This books is both complex and lucid. Goffen has taken great care to use her language tactfully, but not sparingly. She presents many solid arguments with charged notation. The author leaves her reader swimming and fascinated at the same time. Goffen discusses the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian with solid grounding in the social context and network previously left behind by many scholars. Goffen is in fact so well grounded in the social context of her subject's time--and her own time--that "Renaissance Rivals" can certainly be seen as a modern day "Lives of the Artists". However, this text has not been embellished, nor fabricated by anyone desiring to create a legacy. Rather, Goffen's careful text offers argument and explanation for why Michelangelo and his rivals were indeed such great artists.

This masterful work is a pleasure to read and will certainly stand in the pantheon of scholars as an accessible text written by a brilliant author.

A sumptiously illustrated book, written in a chatty, somewhat prolix style. Worthy of five stars, but for two significant problems, warranting the subtraction of two stars:

1) Some annoying factual errors, the most significant of which is the author's repeatedly giving Michelangelo's date of death as 1566, rather than 1564.

2) The binding is simply not up to the task of keeping the heavy pages of the book together. My copy has already split in a couple of places, even though it has been handled gently.