The Torso Belvedere is an ancient fragment celebrated for its relationship to the art of Michelangelo, even though there is no documented evidence of Michelangelo ever viewing it in person. In that sense, the proper way to reconstruct the way in which the Torso inspired Michelangelo is not to delineate a formal correspondence between the prototype of the Torso and Michelangelo's own work, but to identify ways in which Michelangelo transformed the prototype into his own creation. For Michelangelo, the Torso, a body segment without definite identity, signified both an independent form and an abstract form for artistic construction. In this paper, I examine the significance of the Torso Belvedere to Michelangelo's art from two crucial aspects in Renaissance art: first, the Torso's impact on Michelangelo's orientation in creating the all'antica (in the antique/ classical manner) style; and second, the Torso's impact on Michelangelo's unique innovation of non-finito (unfinished) sculpture. The common point in these different approaches to artistic representation is Michelangelo's unique sense of past and present that is the omnipresent and ongoing influence of time on artwork after it leaves the hands of the artist. It is this awareness that made him contemplate the universal expressiveness of art and its ability to truly impress and move people in the future regardless of disfiguration and decomposition.