In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For the next four years, he and a team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling. This book tells the story of those four years and paints a picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding - in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.

Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, with its immense, terracotta-tiled cupola, retains a rare power to astonish. This book tells the story of how the cupola was raised, from its conception to its consecration.

In April 1478, a plot to murder the two heads of the powerful Medici family miscarried dramatically in the cathedral of Florence. A bloodbath followed in reprisal. All Italy was affected as it emerged that the Pope, the King of Naples and the Duke of Urbino were deeply implicated in the plot.

From the WORLD OF ART series, a survey of the artistic achievements of the Renaissance sculptors from Nicola Pisano through Brunelleschi and Donatello to Michelangelo and Cellini.

A biographical novel of Michelangelo. Michelangelo Buonarotti lived in the time of the turbulent Renaissance, the years of poisoning princes, warring popes, the powerful Medici family, and the fanatic monk Savonarola. Working with a God-driven fury he created David , painted the Sistine ceiling, and was the architect of the dome of St Peter's.