Michelangelo is best known for great artistic achievements such as the Sistine ceiling, the David, the Piet?, and the dome of St. Peter's. Yet throughout his seventy-five year career, he was engaged in another artistic act that until now has been largely overlooked: he not only filled hundreds of sheets of paper with exquisite drawings, sketches, and doodles, but also, on fully a third of these sheets, composed his own words.