He required, at this period of his career, the relief of sculpture in order to express the roundness of the human form and the relative depth of objects placed in a receding order.

If anything were needed to make us believe the story of his saying to Pope Julius II.

that sculpture and not painting was his trade, this superb design, so deficient in the essential qualities of painting proper, would suffice.

Men infinitely inferior to himself in genius and sense of form, a Perugino, a Francia, a Fra Bartolommeo, an Albertinelli, possessed more of the magic which evokes pictorial beauty.
Nevertheless, with all its aridity, rigidity, and almost repulsive hardness of colour, the Doni Madonna ranks among the great pictures of the world.

Once seen it will never be forgotten: it tyrannises and dominates the imagination by its titanic power of drawing.