In his studies from the model, unlike Lionardo, he almost always left the features vague, while working out the trunk and limbs with strenuous passion.

He never seems to have been caught and fascinated by the problem offered by the eyes and features of a male or female.

He places masks or splendid commonplaces upon frames palpitant and vibrant with vitality in pleasure or in anguish.
In order to guard against an apparent contradiction, I must submit that, when Michelangelo particularised the body and the limbs, he strove to make them the symbols of some definite passion or emotion.
He seems to have been more anxious about the suggestions afforded by their pose and muscular employment than he was about the expression of the features.

But we shall presently discover that, so far as pure physical type is concerned, he early began to generalise the structure of the body, passing finally into what may not unjustly be called a mannerism of form.
These points may be still further illustrated by what a competent critic has recently written upon Michelangelo's treatment of form.

"No one," says Professor Bruecke, "ever knew so well as Michelangelo Buonarroti how to produce powerful and strangely harmonious effects by means of figures in themselves open to criticism, simply by his mode of placing and ordering them, and of distributing their lines.