true, however, that he became so learned in this branch of knowledge
that he has often entertained the idea of composing a work for
sculptors and painters, which should treat exhaustively of all the
movements of the human body, the external aspect of the limbs, the
bones, and so forth, adding an ingenious discourse upon the truths
discovered by him through the investigations of many years. He would
have done this if he had not mistrusted his own power of treating such
a subject with the dignity and style of a practised rhetorician. I
know well that when he reads Albert Dürer's book, it seems to him of
no great value; his own conception being so far fuller and more
useful. Truth to tell, Dürer only treats of the measurements and
varied aspects of the human form, making his figures straight as
stakes; and, what is more important, he says nothing about the
attitudes and gestures of the body. Inasmuch as Michelangelo is now
advanced in years, and does not count on bringing his ideas to light
through composition, he has disclosed to me his theories in their
minutest details. He also began to discourse upon the same topic with
Messer Realdo Colombo, an anatomist and surgeon of the highest
eminence. For the furtherance of such studies this good friend of ours
sent him the corpse of a Moor, a young man of incomparable beauty, and
admirably adapted for our purpose. It was placed at S. Agata, where I
dwelt and still dwell, as being a quarter removed from public
observation.

"On this corpse Michelangelo demonstrated to me many rare and abstruse
things, which perhaps have never yet been fully understood, and all of
which I noted down, hoping one day, by the help of some learned man,
to give them to the public. Of Michelangelo's studies in anatomy we
have one grim but interesting record in a pen-drawing by his hand at
Oxford. A corpse is stretched upon a plank and trestles. Two men are