English to Italian Art/Literary Art, Arts & Crafts, Painting Michelangelo

It is the latter observation that seems true for Michelangelo. It is as
if the classical tradition of letterforms had reached a hiatus. Inscriptions
had become a part of the urban environment, integrated into buildings
such as Alberti’s Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini* and the façade of
Sta. Maria Novella in Florence; they appear on the tombs of the Popes
(of which the first using this style is that of Julius II from 1471). Jacopo
Bellini (c. 1400–c. 1470) copied classical inscriptions into his sketchbooks.
Classical lettering is found, besides many others, in the paintings of
Mantegna, Perugino, Gentile, Ghirlandaio and Raphael. Where could
things go now but in an utterly new direction, one before which Michelangelo
falls silent? It is not just the pathos of his own life that the classical
letter fails to express, but the DISJUNCTURE OF THE TIMES, which are filled
with brutally asymmetric forces. It is not just the wars and chaos of the
immediate past, but all the religious upheaval, conflict and change that
can be sensed in the centuries to come.