He made architecture, which is quite a different thing; and most often it was the architecture of a painter and sculptor, which points to colour, breadth, imagination, but also to insufficient studies and incomplete education.

The thought may be great and strong, but the execution of it is always feeble and naive....

He had not learned the language of the art.

He has all the qualities of imagination, invention, will, which form a great composer; but he does not know the grammar, and can hardly write....
In seeking the great, he has too often found the tumid; seeking the original, he has fallen upon the strange, and also on bad taste." There is much that is true in this critique, severe though it may seem to be.

The fact is that Michelangelo aimed at picturesque effect in his buildings; not, as previous architects had done, by a lavish use of loosely decorative details, but by the piling up and massing together of otherwise dry orders, cornices, pilasters, windows, all of which, in his conception, were to serve as framework and pedestals for statuary.