We may wonder how Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) came to poetry at all. Through his sculpture, we might say. He was fifteen when a carving of his caught the eye of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was so impressed that he took the boy into his own home. During the two years spent at the palazzo of Lorenzo, who was himself a poet of distinction, Michelangelo must have heard much poetry and much talk of poetry. Somewhat later, when he was the guest of a nobleman in Bologna, he delighted his host by reading aloud, in his Tuscan accent, from the Italian poets. Dante he knew almost by heart. When he was about twenty-eight, already famous for his Pietà, his David, and other works, we are told that for a time he did nothing with brush or chisel, but instead devoted his time to reading poetry and writing sonnets for his own pleasure, turning to verse for what he could not express through sculpture or painting.

From his late twenti ...

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