Vasari recognises him in that old Nicodemus with a hood, who lowers the Christ from the cross in the Deposition, while Milanesi, asserting that Nicodemus has a saint's aureole not a cowl, holds that the portrait of Michelozzo is to be seen in the figure with a black hood who speaks with the disciple beneath him as he gives the body of the Lord into his hands. Certainly Milanesi has good reason to doubt Vasari's assertion, as Nicodemus has no hood: moreover Vasari himself in his second edition of the Lives (1568) assigns as the architect's likeness that very figure with a cowl who is speaking to the disciple. Therefore we must admit that the Aretian Historian was mistaken either in his indication of the figure, or in the reproduction of it as a headpiece to his Life of Michelozzo.
In any case, a similar figure to that in the "Deposition," and with the same head-gear, again appears a little older in the fresco of the convent of San Marco representing the "Adoration of the Magi"; also in another picture of the "Presentation in the Temple"; and in the little square with a "Flight into Egypt", on one of the doors of SS. Annunziata.
If Michelozzo be really portrayed here, we must conclude that the Deposition was painted long before 1442, and the press doors about the same time, or a little later; but the student must take into account the curious fact that in the "Deposition" the disciple who talks to the man with a cowl above him, has also a certain resemblance to the supposed Michelozzo, and that Nicodemus reappears as St. John Baptist on the left of the large altar-piece painted for the church of San Marco, as well as in the picture of the dead Christ, and also as the kneeling King who kisses the feet of the Babe in the fresco of the "Adoration of the Magi."
Therefore, without giving great importance to the question of the true portrait of Michelozzo, we find that these heads, whether of Nicodemus or the hooded disciple, are represented in various pictures by our artist, modified by age, so that from them we may establish the succession of the different works, i. e. first the "Dead Christ" of the Company of the Temple, next the picture at San Marco (1438), then the "Deposition," and lastly the fresco in San Marco, and the little "Annunciation." Thus all these works would certainly date during Fra Angelico's stay in Florence.