Yet in both cases he is indubitably responsible for the general design, and for the brawny carnality of the repulsive woman.

I find it difficult to resist the conclusion that Michelangelo felt himself compelled to treat women as though they were another and less graceful sort of males.

The sentiment of woman, what really distinguishes the sex, whether voluptuously or passionately or poetically apprehended, emerges in no eminent instance of his work.

There is a Cartoon at Naples for a Bacchante, which Bronzino transferred to canvas and coloured.

This design illustrates the point on which I am insisting.
An athletic circus-rider of mature years, with abnormally developed muscles, might have posed as model for this female votary of Dionysus.
Before he made this drawing, Michelangelo had not seen those frescoes of the dancing Bacchantes from Pompeii; nor had he perhaps seen the Maenads on Greek bas-reliefs tossing wild tresses backwards, swaying virginal lithe bodies to the music of the tambourine.