I’ve met Michael many times at the RSA conferences, where we often had dinner together with Brian Copenhaver and Jim Hankins. I liked him immensely. Kind, sweet, generous, erudite, humorous, witty, always interested in the other. Someone who wore his erudition and scholarship lightly, never acting as a the great professor he was. I invited him (and other colleagues) to a conference on Renaissance humanism in my place Groningen in 2013, where he held a splendid lecture, as only he could do. And I remember vividly the grappa we drank in Florence after a Ficino conference, in the company of Elena, Jim and Brian, under a clear starry sky at the Piazza della Signoria. He was such a lovely man, and will be sorely missed. My condolences to the family.