F
Figure 1
or most of my scholarly career���always poised between the arts of the word
and the arts of the picture���Michelangelo has haunted
me. I wrote a book about the human body as image
of the world, and there he was with his incredibly rich
corporeal forms. I wrote a book about the Renaissance
rediscovery of ancient statues, and there he was with his
repertoire of astonishing sculpture representing a sublime modern version of the classical works that were being dug up and viewed for the first time in a thousand
years. I wrote a book about alternative sexualities, and
there he was, again, with his extraordinary love sonnets
to a young man and his haunting drawing of Ganymede
[Figure 1], whom Jupiter loved and transformed himself
into an eagle so that he could abduct the boy to heaven.
HYLAND
