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1500-1508
The return to Florence
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Michelangelo in Florence
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Like Leonardo, Michelangelo grew up in the Florence
of the Medici: a pupil in the workshop of Ghirlandaio
and Bertoldo, from the start he displayed a different
range of interests to his colleague and rival. Attracted
by the strength in modelling form of Giotto and Masaccio,
and by Donatello's classicism, he recognized in
antiquity a formal and spiritual model to emulate. His
approach to the classical world, familiar through the
collections of the Palazzo Medici and the Neo-Platonic
Accademy, was also of a literary nature. Responsive to
Savonarola's preaching, Michelangelo did not share the
practical and scientific ideals of Leonardo, and
justified the study of anatomy only for artistic ends.
Yet the lesson learned from Leonardo's cartoon for
StAnne marked a significant development in his career,
albeit later superseded by other influences. Leonardo
taught Michelangelo how to organize forms within a
unified structure (as is evident in the Tondo Doni),
formally ordered motifs (the emotional agitation
conveyed by the goldfinch in the Tondo Taddei),
and the indefinable spatial and atmospheric qualities of
the background (present in the first experiments of the
unfinished Tondo Pitti).
Michelangelo, David,
1501-04,
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Horence.
Biblical hero, warrior, statesman,
precursor of Christ, the David
commissioned irom the Florentine
Republic sealed the artist's fame thanks
lo the enthusiasm it droused. The huge
marble sculpture, in the classically
counterpoised pose, lacks the delicate
s'race of the Donatello and Verrocchio
versions, but embodies a vigorous ideal
of physical and mental energy. The
David, together with Bandinelli's
Hercules, flanked the entry portal to
the Palazzo Vecchio as contrasted
symbols of fortitude, and stood
thereuntil 1873, later to be replaced by
a copy.
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Leonardo da Vinci, The David of Michelangelo,
with Variations, 1504-05,
Royal Library, Windsor.
Leonardo himself was invited by the Florentine
Republic to sit on the committee which had to find a
site for the statue of David.
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Michelangelo, Tondo Doni, 1503-04, Galleria
degli Uffizi, Florence. Conceived on the lines of
the model of the St Anne, the discords and dynamic
tensions of the figures achieve perfect equilibrium.
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Michelangelo, Tondo Pitti, 1503-05,
Bargello, Florence.
The group strains the limits of the material
support.
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Michelangelo, Study for the St Anne,
1501,
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
The relationship between the figures is here
resolved by the clear highlighting of individual
parts.
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Raphael in Florence
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Having already made his mark in Urbino, working
alongside his father Giovanni Santi and Perugino, Raphael
was in Florence between 1504 and 1508. There he met Leonardo
and Michelangelo, then engaged with their battle paintings.
The interaction with the two masters was crucial to the
development of the young artist, with his extraordinary gift
for assimilation. Within four years he had progressed beyond
the precepts learned from Perugino to reveal a new
flexibility and harmony of structure. To Leonardo he was
indebted for his feeling for compositional unity, the
potential for emotional effect, and the sense of dramatic
and narrative integrity conveyed by the flow of movement and
expression. From this period came the portraits, such as
those of Angelo and Maddalena Doni, modelled on the
Mona Lisa, and the expansive landscapes of Memling, sacred
groups such as the Canigiani Holy Family, formal
variations on the subject of Madonna and Child, and
altarpieces like the Madonna of the Baldaquin,
prototype for the Florentine altarpieces of the Mannerists
during the 1520s. The compositions are constructed on the
pyramid pattern, with figures assembled as a single unit.
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Raphael, Madonna Tempi, 1508, Alte
Pinakothek, Munich.
This composition is built up on a pattern of spiral
movement.
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Raphael, Study for the Madonna and Child,
1518,
Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence.
The drawing is a preparatory study for the
Madonna of Francis I in the Louvre. The main
testing ground for Raphael was the handling of
sacred groups and, in particular, versions of the
Madonna and Child theme. The latter far
surpassed the routine and somewhat lifeless grace of
the Umbrian Madonnas, using movement and body
language to reflect mental processes, in accord with
Leonardo's teachings.
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Leonardo da Vinci
Study for Madonna with the Yarnwinder
c. 1501
Red chalk and silverpoint on rose-colored prepared paper
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
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Raphael, Studies for the Transfiguration,
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Close to completion when the painter died, the
Transfiguration testifies to Raphael's lasting interest in
the psychic vitality of Leonardo's figures.
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Raphael, Portrait of Angelo Doni,
1506,
Galleria Palatina, Florence.
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Raphael, Portrait of Maddalena Doni, 1506,
Galleria Palatina, Florence. Here, the modelling is
confident and imposing, added to which is the emphasis on
the facial expressions of the respective subjects. Though
founded on the precepts of Leonardo, this has the effect of
placing them in their historical context.
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