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name is a clue. The archangel Michael was considered in the Catholic tradition to be the angel of healing and to hold the keys to life and death. Naming the baby Michelagnolo (the Florentine dialect for “Michelangelo”) meant that the mother’s health—indeed probably her life—was in question. What Ludovico probably did not know is that Jewish tradition teaches that Mikha-el ha-Malakh, the angel Michael, is the defender of the Jewish people from its deadly enemies. Michelangelo undoubtedly learned this later on in Florence, and, as we shall see, it had a deeply resounding effect on the rest of his long life.
    Ludovico quickly turned the infant over to a wet nurse, a young village woman from a local family of stonecutters. Decades later, Michelangelo would joke with his friend and biographer, the artist Giorgio Vasari: “Giorgio, if I have any intelligence at all, it has come from being born in the pure air of your native Arezzo, and also because I took the hammer and chisels with which I carve my figures from my wet-nurse’s milk.” 1
    Michelangelo was raised with little affection from his family. His father was distant, and his sickly mother died when he was only six. Michelangelo would remain forever obsessed with the idea of family, without ever being emotionally close to his father, his stepmother, or his siblings. The only connection he felt with them stemmed from the stories he had heard of the family’s supposed ancestral glory. For the rest of his life, he would spend his considerable earnings on restoring his family’s lost fortune, properties, and social standing. This would put him into direct competition with his own father as the acting head of the family, and would be a constant source of friction between them.
    According to Vasari, even the stars and planets had marked Michelangelo for a unique destiny. Vasari’s opening of Michelangelo’s biography sounds almost like the Gospel of John describing the birth of Jesus. Vasari depicts the Holy One gazing down from heaven upon all the world’s artists, poets, and architects laboring in error, and mercifully deciding to send down a spirit of truth, talent, and wisdom to show them the way. No wonder that in the sixteenth century, people talked and wrote about the “divine Michelangelo.” The biographer points out that Michelangelo was born under the sign of Jupiter (i.e., a Pisces), with Mercury and Venus ascendant. There is also a Jewish oral tradition about the influence of the stars and planets. According to the Aggadah, the legends of the sages, one born on the second day of the week (Monday, when Michelangelo was born) will have a bad temper, since it was on the second day of creation that the waters were divided and division is a sign of disputation and animosity. It goes on to say that one born under Jupiter (named Tzedek, or “righteousness,” in Hebrew) will be a tzadkan, a righteous seeker of justice, while Venus’s influence imparts wealth and sensuality, and Mercury brings perception and wisdom. This is an accurate prediction of Michelangelo’s life and career: he had a hot temper, would often stand up for the underdog, became wealthy and famous from his sensual portrayals of the nude (most often male) body, and showed a deep understanding of esoteric spiritual truths.
    Two other vital traits help us understand the inner Michelangelo. He had both an extraordinary visual memory (today we would call it photographic recall) and a rock-solid emotional tenacity. This last characteristic made him a loyal friend, a passionate artist, and a long-suffering romantic. In Talmudic and Kabbalistic thinking, almost everything has a positive and a negative aspect. The ancient sages would often say, “On the one hand…on the other hand…” In Michelangelo’s case, on the one hand, his unbreakable ties to cherished ideas, people, and images would make him an unparalleled artist and a lifelong seeker of Truth. On the other hand, the same