did not influence his style or his method of working, he must have
gained from the master of S. Maria Novella and from his wholesome work a
healthy point of view and a physical and moral vigour which could have
been given him by no other artist in Florence--not even the two great
sculptors, Pollajuolo and Verrocchio, who were indeed not there at that
time--and which acted as a powerful balance to the neuroticism of the
Botticellian school. I do not doubt that Ghirlandajo helped to lay the
foundations from which arose the art of the young Michelangelo devoted
to the expression of force and so contemptuous of morbid sentiment.

Ghirlandajo's school was enthusiastically open-minded toward everything
interesting in art. It was eclectic and encouraged intellectual
curiosity. Michelangelo while he was there studied passionately both the
old and the new Florentine painters and sculptors: Giotto,[2]
Masaccio,[3] Donatello, Ghiberti, Benedetto da Majano, Mino da Fiesole,
Antonio Rossellino and possibly, even at that time, Jacopo della Quercia
and also the Flemish and the German artists, then very much in vogue in
Italy, especially at the court of the Medici.[4] He made a copy in
colour of Martin Schongauer's Temptation of St. Anthony and went to the
Florentine fish-market to take notes for it. Later on he contemptuously
disowned Flemish realism, but a trace of it was left in him always and
in many of his drawings there appears a certain taste, extraordinary in
an idealist, for types of marked naturalism which are sometimes trivial
or almost caricature. Condivi asserts that these first attempts of
Michelangelo met with such success that Ghirlandajo grew jealous.

"To take from him the credit of this copy (of the Schongauer)
Ghirlandajo used to say that it came out of his atelier, as if he had
had a part in it. This jealousy showed very clearly when Michelangelo
asked him for the book of drawings wherein he had sketched shepherds
with their flocks and dogs, landscapes, monuments, ruins, etc., and he
refused to lend it to him. As a matter of fact, he always had the
reputation of being rather jealous, because of his disagreeable
treatment not only of Michelangelo, but also of his own brother, for
when he saw the latter making good progress and showing great promise,
he sent him to France, not so much for his benefit, as has been alleged,
as that he himself might remain first in his art at Florence. I have
mentioned this," adds Cond