Images, Thoughts and Words on Disease in the Works of Michelangelo

The contribution presents an analysis of illness, disease and caring in its various artistic expressions, as found in some excellent and relevant works by Michelangelo. Paintings, sculpture/statue, poems, letters, and other literary forms are examined with the intent to explore ill health as it appears in the work of the great artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), who created vividly paradigmatic works of strikingly expressive force. In the Rhymes he composes, for example, a sort of autobiography in verses, where it is possible to trace all the dominant motifs of his poetics: a poetics that has been increasingly evolving and innovating, over the different ages of his long life. An extraordinarily original and innovative artistic style (precursor to the modern taste), rich in variations and nuances, which has deeply changed the way of conceiving art in its different forms and declinations. So that, starting from a careful analysis of his works, it is possible to bring out the close intertwining between the life of the man, with his thoughts on the complexity of existence , on illness and death (as well as his emotions and his inner world) and the furor (Genius and passion) that moves the personality of an artist all immersed in the brilliant, ingenious and imaginative artistic creation carried out mostly in a solitary way.