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. New York: Harper and Row,
1971.