Old Masters: Great Artists in Old Age
Thomas Dormandy

Donatello, Titian, Hals, Turner, Renoir and Munch, and a surprisingly large number of other major artists, lived to be over seventy-five. Some of their finest and most distinctive work, including Michelangelo’s last Pietà, Goya’s Black Paintings and Monet’s Water Lilies, was done in old age. Whether experimenting with new approaches, adopting new techniques, responding to changed circumstances and debilities, or reacting to the approach of death, the intensity of the late work of many of the greatest artists is striking. Childhood genius has often been studied but, astonishingly, this is the first book to draw attention to a considerably more important artistic phenomenon. Old Masters establishes beyond doubt the frequency with which elderly painters and sculptors reached new heights in their seventies and eighties and suggest why and how they did so.

‘Ancora imparo = Still I’m learning.’ MICHELANGELO, AGED 87

‘If Heaven will grant me but ten more years, I promise to be a truly great artist.’ HOKUSAI, AGED 89

THOMAS DORMANDY is a consultant pathologist and the author of The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis.

£19.99: January 2001: 320 pages 48 illustrations: ISBN 1 85285 290 9

We regret this book is out of print