People called him Il Divino to his face, yet Michelangelo Buonarroti slept fully clothed in his boots, gnawed on bread crusts covered in marble dust, and hoarded a fortune while living like a poor man. This episode goes past the polished marble to the turbulent 88-year life behind it: a family clinging to lost nobility, a paid apprenticeship at 13 with Ghirlandaio, the Medici household, nighttime cadaver dissections at Santo Spirito, and the punch from Pietro Torrigiano that permanently flattened his nose.

We look at the structural illusions in the Pietà, the ruined block of marble that dictated David's pose, the bitter rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci, the Sistine Chapel commission that his enemy Bramante allegedly proposed as a trap, and the years Michelangelo spent designing fortifications against the Medici before hiding in a secret room  ...