Michelangelo was a man of tenacious and profound memory,” Vasari says, “so that, on seeing the works of others only once, he remembered them perfectly and could avail himself of them in such a manner that scarcely anyone has ever noticed it."That “scarcely anyone has ever noticed it,” is easy to understand. For, Michelangelo, when exploiting the “works of others,” classical or modern, subjected them to a transformation so radical, that the results appear no less
“Michelangelesque” than his independent creations. From Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconography.