The genius of Michelangelo as architect, sculptor and painter was recognised by his European contemporaries. Only recently has he been acknowledged as the greatest Italian lyric poet of his generation. From the time he was thirty he wrote verse all his long life, but what turned him into a great poet was his encounter at the age of fifty-seven with Tommaso de'Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman. The versions given here are of the sonnets and madrigals generated by his love for Cavalieri. Whether that love was ever physical is debatable. It was certainly 'metaphysical', and in their conceptual toughness and power these poems anticipate the work of the English poets of that description. The themes are light and dark, cold and the fever of flesh and damnation, helplessness in the face of young beauty, hope for the divine countenance. Immortalized in these poems, Cavalieri has another aspect. Vasari tells us Michelangelo did a full-length cartoon of him. If Aretino is right, millions have admired his features - in all probability Christ in the Sistine Chapel Last Judgement is a portrait of Tommaso de'Cavalieri.