Michelangelo Buonarroti was already in his lifetime the most celebrated and influential artist in Europe. These Dialogues record his participation in the discussions about art hosted by Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo's closest friend. The artist's opinions and ambitions during the period when he was painting The Last Judgment come vividly to life, as does the cultivated and passionate world in which he moved. No other text brings us so close to Michelangelo the artist, thinker, and poet. Francisco de Holanda (c.1517- 84) was a distinguished Portuguese painter and writer. His Dialogues are a polished and thoughtful evocation of intellectual society in16th-century Rome.