My Soul Can Find No Staircase

This quote, attributed to the Michelangelo Notebooks and reflected in modern English translations of his poetry, expresses the Neoplatonic philosophy he absorbed as a teenager in the household of Lorenzo de' Medici, where he studied under the philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Drawing on Plato's concept of Diotima's ladder, Florentine Neoplatonism held that earthly beauty — properly contemplated — could lift the soul toward divine truth rather than distracting it. This idea permeates Michelangelo's sonnets, several addressed to Vittoria Colonna, in which he describes beauty as the vehicle by which "love bears us from earth to God."