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Response to Michelangelo's unfinished works is unlike that to all other artists'. Early commentators, even while registering their unfinished status as problematic, found them perfect. Later they were called his finest works, without qualifications. How is this reconcilable with their not being what was planned by the artist, whose talent presumably let him articulate his statements? Here attention is drawn to several poems of Michelangelo's where unfinished sculpture is a motif. Thus, even if undesirable, this was approached by him as a conscious object of contemplation with meaning.
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Creighton Gilbert (2003) studied this question.
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