Question: What was Michelangelo's earliest known work?
About the article "Michelangelo", section "Madonna and Child".

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Madonna and Child.
The "Madonna of the Steps" is Michelangelo's earliest known work.
It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th-century, Donatello and others such as Desiderio da Settignano.
While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work.
The "Taddeo Tondo" of 1502, shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion.
The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the "Bridgewater Madonna".
The "Bruges Madonna" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues which show the Virgin proudly presenting her son.
Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world.
The "Doni Tondo", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo.
The twisting motion present in the Bruges Madonna is accentuated in the painting.
The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The kneeling angel is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca of St Dominic in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna.
Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century.
In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccolò dell'Arca.
An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccolò, was already in place.
Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style.
Everything about Michelangelo's angel is dynamic.
Michelangelo's Bacchus was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine.
The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet.
While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.
In the so-called "Dying Slave", Michelangelo has again has utilised the figure with marked contraposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep.
With the "Rebellious Slave" It is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state.
These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre.
The "Bound Slave" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb.
The works, known collectively as "The Captives", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged.
The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.  
Michael D. Berger (born June 2, 1967 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a retired Canadian ice hockey defenceman.
He played in the NHL for the Minnesota North Stars.
He also played in the Central Hockey League for the Tulsa Oilers.
He was known affectionately in Tulsa, OK as one of the greatest skate sharpeners ever.
He would sharpen skates out of the Hockey Coliseum pro shop and trained other skate sharpening greats like Cole "The Train" Huth and Caleb "Shanny" Shanahan.
It has been said his work with a skate sharpener could be compared to Michelangelo's work with a brush.
Mike currently lives with his beautiful wife Kimby in Indiana.
They enjoy riding their Harley, traveling, camping and being grandparents. 
Daniele's best-known painting is the "Descent from the Cross" in the Trinità dei Monti (circa 1545), after drawings by Michelangelo; by an excess of praise this work was at one time grouped with Raphael's "Transfiguration" and the "Last Communion of St. Jerome" by Domenichino as the most famous pictures in Rome.
Daniele's two-sided painting of David killing Goliath (c. 1555) in the Louvre too seems to have been based on Michelangelo's designs; for a long time it was attributed to him.
Other notable works include the "Massacre of the Innocents" (1557) in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, a portrait he drew of Michelangelo and a bust he made from Michelangelo's death mask.
A well-known sculpture is the "Cleopatra" in the Belvedere.
From France, Daniele received the commission to make a bronze equestrian statue of Henry II, but he finished only the horse; this was later used for a statue of Louis XIII at the Place Royale and melted down during the French Revolution.
There are also two paintings by this painter in the Damour Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts ("Diana the Huntress"). 
Leonardo da Vinci began making studies in 1504 for a painting, apparently never executed, of Leda seated on the ground with her children.
In 1508 he painted a different composition of the subject, with a nude standing Leda cuddling the Swan, with the two sets of infant twins (also nude), and their huge broken egg-shells.
The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed, and was last recorded in the French royal Château de Fontainebleau in 1625 by Cassiano dal Pozzo.
However it is known from many copies, of which the earliest are probably the "Spiridon Leda", perhaps by a studio assistant and now in the Uffizi, and the one at Wilton House in England (illustrated).
Also lost, and probably deliberately destroyed, is Michelangelo's tempera painting of the pair making love, commissioned in 1529 by Alfonso d'Este for his palazzo in Ferrara, and taken to France for the royal collection in 1532; it was at Fontainebleau in 1536.
Michelangelo's cartoon for the work—given to his assistant Antonio Mini, who used it for several copies for French patrons before his death in 1533—survived for over a century.
This composition is known from many copies, including an ambitious engraving by Cornelis Bos, c. 1563; the marble sculpture by Bartolomeo Ammanati in the Bargello, Florence; two copies by the young Rubens on his Italian voyage, and the painting after Michelangelo, ca.
1530, in the National Gallery, London.
The Michelangelo composition, of about 1530, shows Mannerist tendencies of elongation and twisted pose (the "figura serpentinata") that were popular at the time.
In addition, a sculptural group, similar to the Prado Roman group illustrated, was believed until at least the 19th century to be by Michelangelo.
The last very famous Renaissance painting of the subject is Correggio's elaborate composition of c. 1530 (Berlin); this too was damaged whilst in the collection of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV.
His son Louis, though a great lover of painting, had periodic crises of conscience about his way of life, in one of which he attacked the figure of Leda with a knife.
The damage has been repaired, though full restoration to the original condition was not possible.
Both the Leonardo and Michelangelo paintings also disappeared when in the collection of the French Royal Family, and are believed to have been destroyed by more moralistic widows or successors of their owners.
There were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustrations to Ovid, but most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above.
The subject remained largely confined to Italy, and sometimes France – Northern versions are rare.
After something of a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (apart from a very sensuous Boucher,), Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the later 19th and 20th centuries, with many Symbolist and Expressionist treatments.