Michelangelo was a poet as well as a painter, sculptor and architect. Sculpure, however, was always most important to him. Here is a poem Michelangelo wrote that gives us a sense of the co-existence, in Michelangelo’s art, of a love of the human (particularly male) body and a love of God.

Sculpture, the first of arts, delights a taste
Still strong and sound: each act, each limb, each bone
Are given life and, lo, man’s body is raised,
Breathing alive, in wax or clay or stone.
But oh, if time’s inclement rage should waste,
Or maim, the statue that man builds alone,
Its beauty still remains, and can be traced
Back to the source that claims it as its own.

(translated by Joseph Tusani)