He was astonished, saying this boy knows more than I do; and he was stupefied by this style and new realism: a gift from heaven to a child of such tender years." The first art school of Michael Angelo was the beautiful Church of Santa Maria Novella, called by him affectionately "_Mia Sposa_." Here, day by day, he beheld the "Last Judgment" of Orcagna, the enthroned figures in the Spanish Chapel, and the solemn blue Madonna, now in the Capella Rucellai, with its little figures of prophets on the frame that are already almost Michael Angelesque.

Here he transferred cartoons for Domenico and painted draperies and ornaments; here he mixed colours for fresco painting after the Florentine fashion; and here possibly he first painted on a vault.

No certain trace of his handiwork can be identified upon the walls, but there is a nude figure seated upon the steps resting his chin upon his hand in the fresco of the Blessed Virgin going to the Temple, that has a sinister expression and a force of modelling that Domenico does not usually command.
Now Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, desired to encourage the art of sculpture in Florence; he therefore established a museum of antiquities in his garden near San Marco, and made Bertoldo, the pupil of Donatello and the foreman of his workshop, keeper of the collection, with a special commission to aid and instruct the young men who studied there.

Lorenzo requested Domenico Ghirlandaio to select from his pupils those he considered the most promising, and send them to work in the garden.
Domenico sent Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Francesco Granacci; possibly he was rather glad to get these talented elements of insubordination out of his workshop.

Thus it was that Michael Angelo came under the influence of a pupil and foreman of Donatello.