Love Sonnets and Madrigals to Tommaso De' Cavalieri

by Michelangelo Buonarroti

The genius of Michelangelo as architect, sculptor and painter was recognised by his European contemporaries. Only recently has he been acknowledged as the greatest Italian lyric poet of his generation. From the time he was thirty he wrote verse all his long life, but what turned him into a great poet was his encounter at the age of fifty-seven with Tommaso de'Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman.
The versions given here are of the sonnets and madrigals generated by his love for Cavalieri. Whether that love was ever physical is debatable. It was certainly 'metaphysical', and in their conceptual toughness and power these poems anticipate the work of the English poets of that description. The themes are light and dark, cold and the fever of flesh and damnation, helplessness in the face of young beauty, hope for the divine countenance.
Immortalized in these poems, Cavalieri has another aspect. Vasari tells us Michelangelo did a full-length cartoon of him. If Aretino is right, millions have admired his features - in all probability Christ in the Sistine Chapel Last Judgement is a portrait of Tommaso de'Cavalieri.

Hardcover

First published March 1, 1998

About the author

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance period who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered as the greatest living artist in his lifetime, he has since been held as one of the greatest artists of all time. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

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