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| Michelangelo Anselmi Putti playing with a mask before 1544 drawing British Museum |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Studies of heads before 1556 drawing Rijksmuseum |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Putti playing with hoops ca. 1548 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
In Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1568) the biography of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) comprises about 150 pages. The biography of his contemporary Michelangelo Anselmi (1492-1556) occupies one paragraph –
"Parma also has had at various times many excellent craftsmen and men of fine genius, as has been said above, for, besides one Cristofano Castelli, who painted a very beautiful altar-piece for the Duomo in the year 1499, and Francesco Mazzuoli, whose Life has been written, there have been many other able men in that city. Mazzuoli, as has been related, executed certain works in the Madonna della Steccata, but left that undertaking unfinished at his death, and Giulio Romano, having made a colored design on paper, which may be seen in that place by everyone, directed that a certain Michelangelo Anselmi, a Sienese by origin, but a citizen of Parma by adoption, being a good painter, should carry that cartoon into execution, wherein is the Coronation of Our Lady. This he did excellently well, in truth, so that he well deserved that there should be allotted to him a great niche – one of four very large niches that are in that temple – opposite to that in which he had executed the above-mentioned work after the design of Giulio. Whereupon, setting his hand to this, he carried well on towards completion there the Adoration of the Magi, with a good number of beautiful figures, making on the flat arch, as was related before in the Life of Mazzuoli, the Wise Virgins and the design of copper rosettes; but, when about a third of that work remained for him to do, he died, and so it was finished by Bernard Soiaro of Cremona, as we shall relate in a short time. By the hand of that Michelangelo Anselmi is the Chapel of the Conception in S. Francesco in the same city; and a Celestial Glory in the Chapel of the Cross in S. Pier Martire."
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Putti supporting coat of arms ca. 1532-35 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Studies of seated men ca. 1532-35 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Young David playing the harp ca. 1548-50 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Dead Christ supported by angels ca. 1540-50 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Expelling demon from a woman 1520s drawing National Gallery, Prague |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Legend of St Anselm and Abbot Helsin ca. 1532 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Michelangelo Anselmim Sheet of sketches with figures of Europa and St George ca. 1525-30 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Cupid throwing flowers at sleeping nymph ca. 1525-30 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Study of seated man before 1544 drawing British Museum |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Apollo and Marsyas in a landscape ca. 1540 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Virgin in Glory, St John the Baptist, St Stephen 1530s oil on panel Louvre |