For Reynolds, Discourse Fifteen, 1790, Michelangelo was the 'Founder and Father of modern art', which 'by the divine energy of his own mind, he carried at once to the highest possible point of perfection' ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 272). Reynolds, with an implicit reference to Matthew 9: 20 and 14:36, even referred to himself there as kissing the 'hem of Michelangelo's garment'.
In Reynolds, Discourse One, 1769, in relation to Michelangelo the first artist to be mentioned is Raphael, but the focus is on the influence that Michelangelo had on him. The account here is quite different from that implicit in Ruskin on Raphael. Ruskin agreed that there was a change in Raphael's work, but he, unlike Reynolds, is convinced that it was a change for the worse. Moreover, for Reynolds on Giovanni Bellini as for Ruskin on Giovanni Bellini, Bellini was one of those whose work marked the end of the old style.
For Reynolds, Discourse Six, 1774, in relation to Michelangelo, (as for Vasari on Michelangelo), the study by Michelangelo of the great works of the past was a part of the training, not 'desiring to find the shorter way', which made possible the realisation of the divine energy of the artist's own mind. Ruskin, too, refers to the importance for Michelangelo of studying the Torso of the Vatican.
For Reynolds, Discourse Ten, 1780, in relation to Michelangelo, as for Vasari it is the grasp of form - disegno, in Vasari's terms - which marks the greatness of Michelangelo and the Florentine painters (see for example Vasari, Le Vite, Testo IV.3). This in the debate between the Florentine and Venetian schools is opposed to the colour,' colore' (though in Venice the verbal forms' colorire' or' colorito' are more often used than the noun' colore') of Titian, and the Venetian painters.