'Selected Poems from Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian and English)' Summary

Michelangelo Buonarroti was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. More than three hundred poems survive by him, written over approximately fifty years and mostly in the form of sonnets, madrigals, and capitoli. Michelangelo's poems reveal a complex, deeply introspective, and often tormented personality, conveying passionate love, frustration with the constraints of the physical world, a sense of exile from his fellow human beings, and an all-consuming desire for God, love, and beauty, themes which are all closely intertwined in his verse. Though not considered among the greatest Italian poets, Michelangelo's verse, never published during his lifetime, shows his deep understanding of literary tradition, his sensitive and original use of metaphor, and, most importantly, his ability to produce memorable images that speak directly to the reader through their clarity and emotional charge.