Reynolds is concerned in Discourse Six, 1774, with the study of the work of other artists, not to the exclusion of the study of nature, but as an aid in the study of nature, and that, for Reynolds, means going back to the 'source from whence they drew their principal excellencies, the monuments of pure antiquity':
It is vain for painters or poets to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention may originate. Nothing can come of nothing. Homer is supposed to be possessed of all the learning of his time: and we are certain that Michelangelo, and Raphael (Raffaelle), were equally possessed of all in the art which had been discovered in the works of their predecessors. A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of ancient and modern art, will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in proportion to the number of ideas which have been carefully collected and thoroughly digested. ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 99)
Such study of the ancients can be promoted by the 'genius that hovers over... venerable reliques' of the ancients. The relics Reynolds mentions are 'statues, bas-reliefs, intaglios, cameos,... coins' ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 106). It is through the study of such things that Reynolds believes that art can be restored again as it had been by Michelangelo, and the list reads like the inventory of the possessions of the Medici family in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, where Michelangelo studied under the partronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent.