• Original Art: Page of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s handwriting
• Era: High Renaissance
• Region: Italy

p>Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475–1564) adolescent mind was an incessant battlefield. The opposing forces of religious faith and pagan beauty warred across his consciousness. They also helped spur him to create a pantheon of artistic masterpieces.

The man simply known as Michelangelo possessed a genius as severe and uncompromising as it was fertile. One of the three “giants” of the Florentine High Renaissance, Michelangelo was far more reclusive than his peers Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, and outlived them both by more than forty years. Considered one of the all-time masters, over the course of his life he produced many of the finest frescos and most revered sculptures in the world.

As a student of the Medici Academy, Michelangelo was influenced by the members of the elite who educated and employed him. He came from an aristocratic ancestry and took great pride in this heritage, going to extreme lengths to present himself in an admirable and sophisticated fashion. It was particularly the elegant handwriting of the humanists that awed Michelangelo, and he adopted the “humanist cursive” (later known as cancelleresca) as his own.

The letter reproduced here, written in Michelangelo’s own hand, demonstrates with every stroke of the pen the refinement and passion of one of the greatest artists humanity has produced. Previously released in 2014 as a hardcover journal, we are delighted to bring this design back as a softcover Flexi notebook. And with the addition of the Sistine Chapel’s The Creation of Adam featured on the back cover, the point of creation beautifully bookends this Embellished Manuscript notebook.