He produced a work which, though it is imperfect and immature, brings to light the specific qualities of his inherent art-capacity.

The bas-relief, still preserved in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence, is, so to speak, in fermentation with powerful half-realised conceptions, audacities of foreshortening, attempts at intricate grouping, violent dramatic action and expression.

No previous tradition, unless it was the genius of Greek or Greco-Roman antiquity, supplied Michelangelo with the motive force for this prentice-piece in sculpture.

Donatello and other Florentines worked under different sympathies for form, affecting angularity in their treatment of the nude, adhering to literal transcripts from the model or to conventional stylistic schemes.

Michelangelo discarded these limitations, and showed himself an ardent student of reality in the service of some lofty intellectual ideal.