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Since Freud1 staked out the territory in his "Moses" paper, analysts have again and again turned to the life and works of Michelangelo
Buonarroti as test cases for their efforts to apply the concepts and methods of psychoanalysis outside the clinic. It is not surprising that they should do so; apart from the appeal of rivalrous identification with the master, the majesty of Michelangelo's work (regarded by many as the pinnacle of Western art), matched by the complexity and the legendary "terribilita" of his personality, exerts an irresistible fascination. The Sterbas,2 Peto,3 Liebert,4 and Leites5 are among those who have yielded to the urge to explore the enigma of creativity through the psychoanalytic study of one or another aspect of its supreme examplar.
Oremland, who in earlier work has touched on other aspects of the study of creativity, joins this company with a major treatise on what has been for almost five hundred years considered Michelangelo's masterpiece—the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. It is clear from the outset that Oremland has taken up this challenge with the seriousness and devotion it deserves. He has read everything, looked critically, and brought imaginative new perceptions to the study of this monumental work, in the context of the whole of Michelangelo's oeuvre and the art of the High Renaissance in general. If, in the end, his argument fails to convince, it is not for want of scholarly resource or psychoanalytic acumen.
Briefly, Oremland's position is that, from