Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and renowned poet Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) loved women, not as objects o f physical desire but as fully realized, powerful, heroic figures, equal to and sometimes superior to men. Women appear everywhere in his work, from the Sistine Chapel to his famous Pietà . Curiously, no book or exhibition has ever been devoted exclusively to Michelangelo’s women. Casual observers usually dismiss them as overly muscular and long-limbed.