I knew I was in trouble already when in the introduction Hall claims that for Michelangelo "The male figure... was always in some sense a surrogate for the ultimate human being, the dying and dead figure of Christ." That "always" was too categorical for my taste, but I forged ahead. Then I got to his preposterous interpretation of the Doni Tondo, in which he claims the Virgin Mary is a stand-in for St. Christopher just because she is looking at the Christ child over her shoulder. Hall then proceeds to claim that the mysterious male figures in the background are "sinners waiting for purification in, and passage across it," referring to the river that St. Christopher crosses, but which is not in the Tondo, and which are not even attributes of St. Christopher, I simply gave up. For a better academic treatment of Michelangelo, I highly recommend Marcia Hall's (no relation, I assume) "Michelangelo's 'Last Judgment."