The Religious Symbolism of Michelangelo The Sistine Ceiling

Edgar Wind (1900-1971), German-born art historian, cultural historian, and philosopher, emerges as one of the most brilliant thinkers of his remarkable generation. A student of Panofsky and Cassirer in Hamburg, he was profoundly influenced by the thought of C. S. Peirce and, more especially,Aby Warburg, whom he came to know in the two years before Warburg's death in 1929. Teaching in England and the United States, Wind would do much to promote an interpretive art history crossing disciplinary boundaries. This richly illustrated volume collects Wind's published articles and his extensive unpublished writings on Michelangelo, the latter never before available. His interpretation of the Sistine Ceiling as a typological programme, its Old Testament scenes adumbrating New Testament events, stands as aclassic demonstration of the complex relationships possible between art and ideas. The volume opens with an introduction to Wind's art-historical work by Elizabeth Sears and a survey of recent accomplishments in the field of Renaissance theology by John W. O'Malley, Professor of Church History,Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.