In force, veracity, and realism it may possibly have been superior to those sublime productions.

Everything we know about the growth of Michelangelo's genius leads us to suppose that he departed gradually but surely from the path of Nature.

He came, however, to use what he had learned from Nature as means for the expression of soul-stimulating thoughts.

This, the finest feature of his genius, no artist of the age was capable of adequately comprehending.

Accordingly, they agreed in extolling a cartoon which displayed his faculty of dealing with _un bel corpo ignudo_ as the climax of his powers.
As might be expected, there was no landscape in the Cartoon.
Michelangelo handled his subject wholly from the point of view of sculpture.