In 1976 the art historian Richard Fly wrote that it "suggests that moment when life capitulates before the relentless force of dead matter".[2]
However, in a recent scholarly volume entitled The Slave in European Art, Charles Robertson discusses the Dying Slave in the context of real slavery in Italy during the era of the Renaissance.[3]
^Charles Robertson, "Allegory and Ambiguity in Michelangelo's Slave", in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed. Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) 2012.