Michael Hirst (art historian)

Michael Hirst is an Art historian and an international expert on Italian Renaissance art.

Biography

Lecturer, Reader and Professor Emeritus of Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and a Fellow of the Academy since 1983, Hirst is one of the foremost living specialists on the drawings of Michelangelo. Indeed, such is his international standing in the world of Michelangelo studies that he was made a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling in 1987, and the following year curated an exhibition on Michelangelo as Draftsman for the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

He has made a signal contribution to knowledge and understanding of one of the greatest periods of Italian art. Among his publications on the subject are the standard monograph on Sebastiano del Piombo, on Michelangelo and His Drawing and The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration.

He is an Accademico d'Onore, or honorary member, of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno of Florence.^[1]

Prizes

• 2001, Serena Medal, British Academy.^[2]

Publications

• Sebastiano del Piombo. Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Michelangelo and His Drawing. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-300-04796-7
• The Young Michelangelo, with Jill Dunkerton. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-300-06135-2
• The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration. Abradale Press Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1994. ISBN 0-8109-8176-9

References