Giorgio Vasari, whose prime loyalty was always to Michelangelo, offers his ultimate praise at the beginning of his Life of Michelangelo in The Lives of the Artists, published in 1568. The first paragraph sets the tone of the 84 pages that follow: "While industrious and choice spirits, aided by the light afforded by Giotto and his followers, strove to show the world the talent with which their happy stars and well-balanced humors had endowed them, and endeavoured to attain to the height of knowledge by imitating the greatness of Nature in all things, the great Ruler in Heaven looked down and, seeing these vain and fruitless efforts and the presumptuous opinion of man more removed from truth than light from darkness, resolved, in order to rid him of these errors, to send to earth a genius universal in each art, to show singlehanded the perfection of line and shadow, and who should give relief to his paintings, show a sound judgment in sculpture, and in architecture should render habitations convenient, safe, healthy, pleasant, well-proportioned, and enriched with various ornaments. He further endowed him with true moral philosophy and a sweet poetic spirit, so that the world should marvel at the singular eminence of his life and works and all of his actions, seeming rather divine than earthly" (Everyman edition, vol. 3, 108). During the sixteenth century, Michelangelo bestrode the art world like a colossus, and artists desperately sought to learn how to understand his works by making drawings of them and studying them, seeking there inspiration and the ability to please patrons who demanded they achieve the effects that Michelangelo's paintings and sculptures had. Michelangelo's own drawings ranged from quick sketches, proposals from commissions mixing his hand-written ideas with sketches, working drawings for paintings and sculptures, proposals for ornaments, architectural projects, and presentation drawings for his friends. On occassion he also gave drawings to artists to use as a basis of their own compositions (see The Death of Phaeton below).

Select Bibliography: Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo. 5 volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943-1960; rpt. 1968); J. A. Gere, Drawings by Michelangelo in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, The Ashmolean Museum, The British Museum, and other English Collections (London: The British Museum, 1975); J. A. Gere, Drawings by Michelangelo from The British Museum (NY: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1979), Paul Joanides, Michelangelo and His Influence: Drawings from Windsor Castle (Washington D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1996); Paul Joanides, The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).