Status Updates From A Dream of Stone (ekphrasis)

Yourcenar on behalf of Tommai dei Cavalieri, Michelangelo’s friend and possibly lover:

‘When men contemplate my picture, they will not ask who I was or what I did: they will praise me for having existed.”

I often look at a portrait in a gallery thinking exactly this though I’ve never articulated it to myself so well.

From the brilliant essay ‘The dark brain of Piranesi’. The passage is in the first comment due to lack of space here.