He is a power which has to be reckoned with; and the reason for speaking about him at length here is that, in this characteristic blending of intense vision with impassioned realistic effort after truth to fact, this fascination mingled with repulsion, he anticipated Michelangelo.

Deep at the root of all Buonarroti's artistic qualities lie these contradictions.
Studying Signorelli, we study a parallel psychological problem.

The chief difference between the two masters lies in the command of aesthetic synthesis, the constructive sense of harmony, which belonged to the younger, but which might, we feel, have been granted in like measure to the elder, had Luca been born, as Michelangelo was, to complete the evolution of Italian figurative art, instead of marking one of its most important intermediate moments.
The decorative methods and instincts of the two men were closely similar.

Both scorned any element of interest or beauty which was not strictly plastic--the human body supported by architecture or by rough indications of the world we live in.

Signorelli invented an intricate design for arabesque pilasters, one on each side of the door leading from his chapel into the Cathedral.