Phenomenology of Revelation: Faith, Truth, and the Darkness of God in Sixteenth-Century Italy

This essay unfolds a phenomenology of revelation in sixteenth-century Italy and elucidates its undergirding concepts of faith, truth, and divine darkness. Analyzing visual and verbal works by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) and poetry by Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547) and Muzio Sforza (1542–1597), this study offers a portrait of faith as embodied experience. Darkness emerges from these analyses as a condition of faith, a place or space beyond the senses and a state of emptiness achieved through closing them, a precondition for spiritual visions or divine union, and the only proportional means for approaching the transcendent divine.