In 1538, Francisco de Holanda, a young painter of twenty years old and a budding humanist, traveled to Italy on the orders of John III of Portugal to illustrate "the most distinguished fortresses and works" of that land. This diplomatic mission allowed him to visit several Italian cities and meet, in Rome, Michelangelo, who was then sixty-three years old and had become the most influential artist in Europe. The dialogues collected in this volume recreate in a literary way the conversations about art that Francisco had with the teacher in the meetings organized by the poet Vittoria Colonna, a great friend of Michelangelo and a leading figure of the Italian Renaissance, in which other artists from the epoch. This careful edition not only offers us an original literary piece in which the unique voices and opinions of a good number of illustrious characters sound fully alive, but also a work of great historical interest, as it contributed to the dissemination of the novel idea of ​​creation art that would prevail in the West for centuries to come.