MICHELANGELO AND THE MEDICI Lecture Comes to Detroit Institute of Arts, 3/9

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) will host Dr. Edward Goldberg, a distinguished Florence-based art historian and writer on Saturday, March 9, at 2 p.m. for a talk on Michelangelo's relationship to his major patrons, the Medici. The lecture is free with museum admission and is sponsored by the European Paintings Council, a DIA auxiliary.

Goldberg, a specialist in Italian history and culture, will discuss the complex relationship between Michelangelo, a supremely gifted sculptor, painter, architect and poet, and members of the wealthy and politically powerful Medici family, who were also major art patrons and collectors.

Michelangelo created some of his most memorable works for the Medici, including the Medici tombs and the Laurentian Library in Florence, but he also worked for their enemies. Goldberg will trace Michelangelo's relationship with the Medici and illuminate the turbulent world of Renaissance art, politics and patronage.

Goldberg has published numerous books and articles in areas ranging from Medici art collecting and patronage, to cultural relations between Italy and Spain, to Florentine Jewish history and culture. He received his doctorate from Oxford, taught at Harvard and founded the Medici Archive Project. He has made important archival discoveries, including 200 letters from Benedetto Blanis, a Jew in the Florentine ghetto in the early 17th century, and L'Ebreo (The Jew), an unpublished five-act comedy from 1613 by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. In 2012, Goldberg won the International Flaiano Prize for Italian Culture for his book Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis.

The European Paintings Council (EPC) aims to cultivate awareness of the Detroit Institute of Arts' stellar collection of European paintings. The EPC offers an annual series of programs that enables members to become intimately acquainted with the DIA's collection through private talks with curators and conservators, special access to related exhibitions, in-depth gallery tours and formal lectures. For EPC program information, to join, or for other questions, visit www.dia.org/epc or call 313-833-9162.