Dreaming of Michelangelo is the first book-length study to explore the intellectual and cultural affinities between modern Judaism and the life and work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. It argues that Jewish intellectuals found themselves in the image of Michelangelo as an "unrequited lover" whose work expressed loneliness and a longing for humanity's response. The modern Jewish imagination thus became consciously idolatrous. Writers brought to life—literally—Michelangelo's sculptures, seeing in them their own worldly and emotional struggles. The Moses statue in particular became an archetype of Jewish liberation politics as well as a central focus of Jewish aesthetics. And such affinities extended beyond sculpture: Jewish visitors to the Sistine Chapel reinterpreted the ceiling as a manifesto of prophetic socialism, devoid of its Christian elements. According to Biemann, the phenomenon of Jewish self-recognition in Michelangelo's work offered an alternative to the failed promises of the German enlightenment. Through this unexpected discovery, he rethinks German Jewish history and its connections to Italy, the Mediterranean, and the art of the Renaissance.

“And then it happened . . . a ray of illumination shot straight up and down to the left and the right, forming a pair of axes. My heart began to beat very fast, yet I didn’t blink. I couldn’t have taken my eyes off what I was seeing if I had wanted to.” At the dawn of the new millennium, Joseph Pierce Farrell made a startling discovery that holds the potential to transform the world. Having abandoned his childhood dream of a career in healthcare, he had settled for a passionless job in real estate, lining his pockets while eroding his soul. Then one day he fell into a humble job restoring antiques and furniture. One evening while working in his basement studio, he drifted into a meditative state and permitted his mind to soar with the unlimited imagination of a child. In that moment, he experienced a brilliant, blinding flash that ignited within him a remarkable power. Since that transformative moment, he has restored the facial features of a severely disfigured young man, virtually erased an inoperable brain tumor, dramatically reversed the aging process of the faces of celebrities, and mended broken bones—simply with intention supported by a profound connection to a higher source. After a decade of his pioneering work exploring consciousness and its relationship to health and healing, Farrell was invited to present his findings internationally in academic settings, catapulting him to the cutting edge of the integrative healthcare movement. Endorsed by leading researchers and medical doctors, Farrell’s body of evidence has begun to construct a bridge to permit science and spirituality to heal their divide and advance the emerging integrative healthcare model. In this unprecedented book, Farrell chronicles his journey of discovery and poignant stories of human transformation. He outlines an easy-to-follow five-step process that readers can use to ignite their own capacity to manifest change in their lives and the world. Heralding a message of unlimited possibility, Manifesting Michelangelo makes a compelling argument, supporting what science is beginning to embrace, what the great artists have always known, and what spiritual traditions have long promised—that we possess a latent capacity to manifest on the level of the miraculous. It is the first book that asks us to believe—based not on faith alone, but on eyewitness medical testimony, scientific evidence, and profound photos—that we have the capacity to manifest the change in the world that our conscience decrees and our hearts desire.

New translations by Joseph Tusiani of Michelangelo’s little-known but highly memorable verse.

In recent years, art historians have begun to delve into the patronage, production and reception of sculptures-sculptors' workshop practices; practical, aesthetic, and esoteric considerations of material and materiality; and the meanings associated with materials and the makers of sculptures. This volume brings together some of the top scholars in the field, to investigate how sculptors in early modern Italy confronted such challenges as procurement of materials, their costs, shipping and transportation issues, and technical problems of materials, along with the meanings of the usage, hierarchies of materials, and processes of material acquisition and production. Contributors also explore the implications of these facets in terms of the intended and perceived meaning(s) for the viewer, patron, and/or artist. A highlight of the collection is the epilogue, an interview with a contemporary artist of large-scale stone sculpture, which reveals the similar challenges sculptors still encounter today as they procure, manufacture and transport their works.

?Michelangelo's masterpiece The Dream ( Il Sogno) has been described as one of the finest of all Italian Renaissance drawings and is amongst The Courtauld Gallery's greatest treasures. Executed in c. 1533, The Dream exemplifies Michelangelos unrivalled skill as draughtsman. Accompanying an exhibition at the Courtauld in 2010, this catalogue examines this celebrated work in the context of a group of closely related drawings by Michelangelo, as well as some of his original letters and poems and works by his contemporaries.

The most published and lauded woman writer of early sixteenth-century Italy, Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547) in effect defined what was the "acceptable" face of female authorship for her time. Hailed by the generation's leading male literati as an equal, she was praised both for her impeccable command of Petrarchan style and for the unimpeachable chastity and piety of the persona she promoted through her literary works. This book presents for the very first time a body of Colonna's verse that reveals much about her poetic aims and outlook, while also casting new light on one of the most famous friendships of the age. Sonnets for Michelangelo, originally presented in manuscript form to her close friend Michelangelo Buonarroti as a personal gift, illustrates the striking beauty and originality of Colonna's mature lyric voice and distinguishes her as a poetic innovator who would be widely imitated by female writers in Italy and Europe in the sixteenth century. After three centuries of relative neglect, this new edition promises to restore Colonna to her rightful place at the forefront of female cultural production in the Renaissance.

At least since the publication of Burckhardt’s seminal study, the Renaissance has commonly been understood in terms of discontinuities. Seen as a radical departure from the intellectual and cultural norms of the ‘Middle Ages’, it has often been associated with the revival of classical Antiquity and the transformation of the arts, and has been viewed primarily as an Italian phenomenon. In keeping with recent revisionist trends, however, the essays in this volume explore moments of profound intellectual, artistic, and geographical continuity which challenge preconceptions of the Renaissance. Examining themes such as Shakespearian tragedy, Michelangelo’s mythologies, Johannes Tinctoris’ view of music, the advent of printing, Burgundian book collections, and Bohemian ‘renovatio’, this volume casts a revealing new light on the Renaissance. Contributors include Klára Benešovská, Robert Black, Stephen Bowd, Matteo Burioni, Ingrid Ciulisová, Johannes Grave, Luke Houghton, Robin Kirkpatrick, Alexander Lee, Diotima Liantini, Andrew Pettegree, Rhys W. Roark, Maria Ruvoldt, Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Robin Sowerby, George Steiris, Rob C. Wegman, and Hanno Wijsman.