Like Reynolds, Ruskin compares Michelangelo with Homer and with Shakespeare. However, Jameson, Hand-book to the Public Galleries of Art in and near London had questioned the precedence and given Raphael the role of Shakespeare, and Michelangelo the role of Milton - good at 'epic grandeur' but not universally good as she considered Raphael, who 'has never yet been equalled'.
At Works, 4.118 Phidias, Michelangelo and Dante stand out above all others, and in the next rank down because they had 'less fulness and earnestness of faith' come Homer and Shakespeare. However, in a footnote added there in 1883 Ruskin gives some important qualifications and explanations of the paragraph, which he came to consider 'nearly pure nonsense'.
Ruskin warns in Elements of Drawing (1857) that Michelangelo, Raphael and Rubens are great ones with whom you run the risk of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults' ( Works, 15.220). Reynolds too makes the point in Discourse Fifteen that, great as Michelangelo is, an imitation of his work is 'always dangerous, and will prove sometimes ridiculous' Reynolds, Discourses, p. 276.