My project is a study of Michelangelo’s Bacchus. The fellowship at the American Academy will allow me to finish a book in progress that reinterprets the statue, situating it within the patronage of Cardinal Raffaele Riario and the visual culture of curial Rome. After Riario fell from grace, Michelangelo’s biographers erased all memory of the Cardinal from the artist’s career, falsely claiming that Riario’s right-hand man Jacopo Galli was the patron of the Bacchus. This error was corrected only in 1981, after payment records for the figure were discovered. All scholarship on Bacchus before this date has overlooked Cardinal Riario’s fundamental role in Michelangelo’s career, and interpretations of the Bacchus have as a result been greatly distorted. My book will propose new readings of the statue based on a close examination of many neglected yet fundamental archival documents and manuscript sources related to Riario and his engagement with art, poetry, and theater.