Probably Michelangelo intended in this episode to surpass a Madonna by Luca Signorelli, with whose genius he obviously was in sympathy, and who felt, like him, the supreme beauty of the naked adolescent form.

Signorelli had painted a circular Madonna with two nudes in the landscape distance for Lorenzo de' Medici.

The picture is hung now in the gallery of the Uffizi.

It is enough perhaps to remark that Michelangelo needed these figures for his scheme, and for filling the space at his disposal.

He was either unable or unwilling to compose a background of trees, meadows, and pastoral folk in the manner of his predecessors.