The Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art

This text is the sequel to Barolsky's "Vasari" trilogy and pendant volume in particular to "Michelangelo's Nose". It continues the author's examination of the poetic imagination of Michelangelo's autobiography in relation to his art and poetry. Barolsky suggests that Michelangelo's concerns with poetic origins are linked in subtle, diverse ways to the meanings of Botticelli's "Primavera", Signorelli's "Pan", Piero di Cosimo's Prometheus pictures, Raphael's "Parnassus", and Titian's "Fete Champetre". Focusing on the unexpected importance for Michelangelo of the pastoral, Barolsky illuminates the role of Ovid both in the artist's biography and in his theory and practice of art. Conceiving his book as a contribution to our understanding of poetic imagination in the age of the Renaissance, Barolsky elaborates here on his previous discussion of Renaissance biography in the tradition of Boccaccio's fables.