Optimus2g

**The followwing excerpts are from the website I have linked below. Please see this informative link for the source material, as it orignally appeared from this informative blog. I highly recommend it**

"Maria Ruvoldt’s book The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep and Dreams is an absorbing study of ‘the Renaissance perception, production and reception of sleep and dreams and their relation to divine inspiration.’ In Chapter 6 of the book, Ruvoldt looks in detail at a fascinating drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti, 'Il Sogno' (The Dream)":

"The drawing, done in graphite on paper, was made around 1533. It is currently in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Ruvoldt speculates that it was among a number of pieces that Michelangelo presented as gifts to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, a young man with whom the artist had recently become infatuated. The drawing has been interpreted (by Panovsky, among others) as an allegory for virtue triumphing over vice in an ‘awakening of the soul.’"

I took an immediate liking to this image because of how it indicates the position of the mind and dreaming in this particualr time and place. I was very interested in Ruvoldt had to say about the positioning of the angel's trumpet on the central depicted male figure:
"Apparently, Renaissance medical tradition held that the forehead corresponded to the location of the mind’s imaginative faculty, to that part of the brain which receives and preocesses visual impressions: in which case, what we see here is a depiction of the artist directly inspired by images received ‘from above.’" I found it interestign to trace the connection between the medical thoughts of the time pertaining to dreams and how they were depicted artistically.