Michelangelo is a good friend and mentor of Daniele da Volterra, whose sculpture reflects his study of older artist’s recent works.

Daniele Ricciarelli, a Mannerist painter and sculptor born in Volterra (in today's Tuscany), had initially studied with the Sienese artists Il Sodoma and Baldassare Peruzzi, but he was not well received and left them.

He appears to have accompanied the latter to Rome in 1535, and helped paint the frescoes in the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne.

He then became an apprentice to Perin del Vaga.

He had helped Perin from 1538 to 1541 with the painting of frescoes in the villa of Cardinal Trivulvives at Salone, in the Massimi chapel in Trinità dei Monti, and the chapel of the crucifixion in San Marcello al Corso.

He was commissioned to paint a frieze in the main salon of the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, depicting the life of Fabius Maximus.

In Rome, he also started working in the circle of Michelangelo and befriended him.

Michelangelo has used his influence with Pope Paul III to secure Daniele commissions and the post of superintendent of the works of the Vatican, a position he is to retain until the Pope's death.

Michelangelo has also provided him with sketches on which Daniele bases some of his paintings, especially his series of frescoes in the Orsini chapel in the Trinità dei Monti, the commission for which Daniele had received in December of 1541.

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 da Volterra had been commissioned by Paul III to complete the decoration of the Sala Regia.

On the death of the pope in 1549, he lost his position as superintendent and the pension to which it entitled him.

He has since devoted himself chiefly to sculpture.

After Michelangelo dies in Rome on February 18, 1564, a few weeks shy of his eighty-ninth birthday, Pius commissions the artist’s good friend and former student to cover up Michelangelo’s nude figures in the Sistine Chapel, which is how Volterra earns the nickname Il Braghettone—"the breeches maker."

Volterra’s fine draftsmanship of the nude reflects his study of the late works of Michelangelo, of whom Volterra creates a bronze portrait bust (later famous).