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

Candidate passages:
The Madonna of the Stairs (or Madonna of the Steps) is a relief sculpture by Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence.
It was sculpted around 1491, when Michelangelo was about seventeen.
This and the "Battle of the Centaurs" were Michelangelo's first two sculptures.
The first reference to the "Madonna of the Stairs" as a work by Michelangelo was in the 1568 edition of Giorgio Vasari's "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects". 
The term eclectic was first used by Johann Joachim Winckelmann to characterize the art of the Carracci, who incorporated in their paintings elements from the Renaissance and classical traditions.
Indeed, Agostino, Annibale and Lodovico Carracci had tried to combine in their art Michelangelo's line, Titian's color, Correggio's chiaroscuro, and Raphael's symmetry and grace.
In the 18th century, Sir Joshua Reynolds, head of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, was one of the most influential advocates of eclecticism.
In the sixth of his famous academical "Discourses" (1774), he wrote that the painter may use the work of the ancients as a "magazine of common property, always open to the public, whence every man has a right to take what materials he pleases" (Reynolds 1775, ). 
To the single bay of Michelangelo's Greek Cross, Maderno added a further three bays.
He made the dimensions slightly different to Michelangelo's bay, thus defining where the two architectural works meet.
Maderno also tilted the axis of the nave slightly.
This was not by accident, as suggested by his critics.
An ancient Egyptian obelisk had been erected in the square outside, but had not been quite aligned with Michelangelo's building, so Maderno compensated, in order that it should, at least, align with the Basilica's façade.
The nave has huge paired pilasters, in keeping with Michelangelo's work.
The size of the interior is so "stupendously large" that it is hard to get a sense of scale within the building.
The four cherubs who flutter against the first piers of the nave, carrying between them two holy water basins, appear of quite normal cherubic size, until approached.
Then it becomes apparent that each one is over 2 metres high and that real children cannot reach the basins unless they scramble up the marble draperies.
The aisles each have two smaller chapels and a larger rectangular chapel, the Chapel of the Sacrament and the Choir Chapel.
These are lavishly decorated with marble, stucco, gilt, sculpture and mosaic.
Remarkably, there are very few paintings, although some, such as Raphael's "Sistine Madonna" have been reproduced in mosaic.
The most precious painting is a small icon of the Madonna, removed from the old basilica.
Maderno's last work at St. Peter's was to design a crypt-like space or "Confessio" under the dome, where the cardinals and other privileged persons could descend in order to be nearer to the burial place of the apostle.
Its marble steps are remnants of the old basilica and around its balustrade are 95 bronze lamps. 
The Madonna of Bruges is a marble sculpture by Michelangelo of Mary with the infant Jesus.
Michelangelo's depiction of the "Madonna and Child" differs significantly from earlier representations of the same subject, which tended to feature a pious Virgin smiling down on an infant held in her arms.
Instead, Jesus stands upright, almost unsupported, only loosely restrained by Mary's right hand, and appears to be about to step away from his mother and into the world.
Meanwhile, Mary does not cling to her son or even look at him, but gazes down and away, as if she knows already what is to be her son's fate.
It is believed the work was originally intended for an altar piece.
If this is so, then it would have been displayed facing slightly to the right and looking down.
"Madonna and Child" shares certain similarities with Michelangelo's "Pietà", which was completed shortly before, mainly, the chiaroscuro pattern and the movement of the drapery.
The long, oval face of Mary is also reminiscent of the "Pietà".
The work is also notable in that it was the only sculpture by Michelangelo to leave Italy during his lifetime.
It was bought by Giovanni and Alessandro Moscheroni (Mouscron), from a family of wealthy cloth merchants in Bruges, then one of the leading commercial cities in Europe.
The sculpture was sold for 4,000 florin.
The sculpture was removed twice from Belgium after its initial arrival.
The first was in 1794, after French Revolutionaries had conquered the Austrian Netherlands during the French Revolutionary Wars; the citizens of Bruges were ordered to ship it and several other valuable works of art to Paris.
It was returned after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815.
The second removal was in 1944, during World War II, with the retreat of German soldiers, who smuggled the sculpture to Germany enveloped in mattresses in a Red Cross truck.
It was found two years later in Altaussee/Austria and again returned.
It now sits in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium.
After the attack on Michelangelo's "Pietà" in 1972, the sculpture was placed behind bulletproof glass, and the public can only view it from 15 feet away. 
In art, a study is a drawing, sketch or painting done in preparation for a finished piece, or as visual notes.
Painting and drawing studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) were part of the artist’s education.
Studies are used by artists to understand the problems involved in execution of the artists subjects and the disposition of the elements of the artist work, such as the human body depicted using light, color, form, perspective and composition.
Studies can be traced back as long ago as the Italian Renaissance, for example Leonardo da Vinci's and Michelangelo's studies.
Anatomical studies of the human body were also executed by medical doctors.
The physician Andreas Vesalius work of anatomical studies ‘‘De humani corporis fabrica" ("On the fabric of the human body"), published 1543, was a pioneering work of human anatomy illustrated by Titian's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar.
The "Fabrica" emphasized the priority of dissection and what has come to be called the "anatomical" view of the body, seeing human internal functioning as an essentially corporeal structure filled with organs arranged in three-dimensional space.
In this work, Vesalius also becomes the first person to describe mechanical ventilation.
It is largely this achievement that has resulted in Vesalius being incorporated into the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists college arms and crest.