In 1496, two years after the death of Giovanni Pico, his nephew Gianfrancesco published among other works that «most elegant oration» later called «De hominis dignitate» (see already the maginal title of the incunabulum ). The « Discourse» had originally been intended as an introduction to the «900 Theses»,written in the same extraordinary year of 1486. Recognition of human dignity is what Pico starts with, quoting the mysterious «Abdalah the Saracen» and Asclepius. From his own point of view, however, human dignity is not so much founded on ancient clichés (the primacy of man based on his central place in the universe, as microcosmos), but on the fact that the human creature, not having a fixed image and therefore being able to share freely in the essence of various creatures, will in the end be able to arrive at his final identity with God. Human dignity does not consist above all in a horizontal domination over the cosmos, but in a vertical tension towards a goal which is not creatural. Pico resorts both to Genesis 1-3 and to Plato's Symposion with its image of Eros. Pico wants to give a tension to his creature which is not present in the static quality of the biblical paradisal condition: this tension comes from platonic Eros. In Pico'account Eros, the son of Eros and Penia is therefore fused with Adam, the creature made of earth and spirit, and while in the biblical myth it is forbidden to desire knowledge, here the divine warning to the «creature of indefinite image» concerns instead the orientation of desire, that must push knowledge further, towards wisdom and a higher identity. The route indicated to the creature without an image lies through images, to get beyond all images, finding fulfilment only in the final identity with he who lives in darkness, over and beyond every image.