Product Review

The Great Courses Lectures on DVD produced by The Teaching Company, 2007. 6 DVDs come with Course Guidebooks. Professor Wallace has published four books about Michelangelo-one of which received the prestigious Umhoefer Prize for Achievement in the Humanities-and has completed a forthcoming biography of the artist. He has been the principal consultant on a two-part BBC documentary, The Divine Michelangelo. His expertise has received the acknowledgment of the Vatican itself, which invited him to Rome to join a select group of scholars, curators, and conservators from around the world and confer about the delicate conservation of Michelangelo's precious frescos. Professor Wallace is an extraordinary teacher, as well-the winner of the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, given by Missouri's Coordinating Board for Higher Education. Professor Wallace puts those teaching skills on display throughout these lectures, which feature more than 900 visuals, including stunning reproductions of the master's sculptures, paintings, and architecture, as well as rough sketches, preparatory drawings, and photographs of the places he lived and worked. Drawing on a vast command of artistic knowledge, period detail, and Michelangelo's day-to-day working life, he takes you from the marble-dust-laden air of the artist's studio to the inner sanctum of the Vatican itself-introducing you to a man even the most fervent Michelangelo fan has likely never encountered, revealing him as both artist and aristocrat.