A significant moment of rivalry and influence between three Italian masters
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For those who missed “Michelangelo: the last decades” at the British Museum this summer, or whose appetite for the great Italian master is unabated, another major London show sheds light on his work this autumn. In an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, Michelangelo is joined by his peers Leonardo and Raphael to reflect on a significant moment in the Italian Renaissance when the three titans crossed paths in the city of Florence.
In 1503, the Government of Florence commissioned Leonardo to paint a huge mural of the Battle of Anghiari in its new council hall, the Palazzo Vecchio. The following year, they invited Michelangelo to paint the accompanying Battle of Cascina on the opposite wall. While neither project was completed, and what was painted has been lost, this exhibition will bring together the two artists’ preparatory drawings for the projects from European collections and the UK’s Royal Collection. These will provide a remarkable opportunity to compare the two great painter’s approaches as they developed these compositions.
The exhibition also shows how Raphael, the youngest of the three artists, was directly inspired by Leonardo and Michelangelo. The latter’s marble masterpiece, “Taddei Tondo” (around 1504-05), is displayed alongside Raphael’s paintings of similar compositions, “Bridgewater Madonna” (around 1507-08) and “Esterházy Madonna” (around 1508). The show concludes with a drawing by Raphael, on loan from Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which is a copy of the central scene of Leonardo’s “Battle of Anghiari.”
Image: Bastiano da Sangallo, after Michelangelo Buonarroti, “The Battle of Cascina (‘The Bathers’),” c.1542. Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Collection of the Earl of Leicester. By kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of Holkham Estate.
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