The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation

During his career, Michelangelo produced not only works of painting, sculpture, and architecture but also over 300 sonnets, madrigals and other poems. The poems are not the product of a highly accomplished hand, but they are invaluable for what they reveal of the artist's innermost feelings about such universal themes as love, death, and redemption and also about more mundane matters, such as the tribulations of painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. This book, a bilingual edition of Michelangelo's complete poetic output, is based on the definitive Girardi dating of the poems. Annotations and detailed textual commentary give background data essential for understanding Michelangelo's references. An introduction, which incorporates Michelangelo scholarship, includes a biographical sketch of the artist, a critical examination of the themes, content, style, and sources of his poetry, and a review of the criticism devoted to his poems. The Italian original of each poem appears with the translation, and several paintings and drawings that are relevant to the poems are reproduced.