ABSTRACT
Although Michelangelo was a real person who fought with his brothers, rebuked his father, chided his nephew, mocked his rivals, ridiculed his assistants, resented his patrons, worried about being cheated, counted his pennies, invested in real estate, became rich, and suffered from kidney stones, he nevertheless exists in our imagination largely as a mythic being. We do not much think of the real Michelangelo, for example, eating with pleasure the marzolino cheese, sausages, ravioli, beans, and choice pears that his nephew in fact sent to him in Rome. Instead we picture him, as his biographers did mythopoetically, partaking sacramentally only of bread and wine.
