In the hall of the Great Council Chamber of the
Palazzo Vecchio, Leonardo and Michelangelo (1505-06) worked
on frescoes for two monumental scenes commemorating glorious
moments in Florentine history. The subjects were to
celebrate the victories of Cascina (1364) and Anghiari
(1440), fought respectively against Pisa and Milan. Both
scenes have been lost. Michelangelo did not even begin the
fresco for the former and all that remain of the cartoons
are copies of the episode of the soldiers bathing in the
Arno. Leonardo, who owed the commission to the advocacy of
his friend Machiavelli, managed to finish the cartoons and
part of the painting for the latter, but fortune did not
smile on the enterprise. His method, adopted from Pliny,
involved using a kind of stucco as an alternative to fresco,
on the lines of that already used for the Last Supper.
However, the painting started to run and crumble, and all
trace of it was lost by 1563, when Vasari frescoed the hall.
Of the original work only partial copies remain; as do
Leonardo's own invaluable sketches of skirmishes and single
heads.
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Peter Paul Rubens, The Battle of Anghiari,
(copied from Leonardo da Vinci), 1503-05, Musee du
Louvre, Paris.
Leonardo envisaged the scene as a furious struggle of men and
horses around the standard, in a grand, heroic style.
It was not an historical narrative but a symbolic representation
of the violence and passion of war,
defined by Leonardo himself as "insane and bestial madness". |
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The Battle of Anghiari (detail)
1503-05
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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The Battle of Anghiari (copy of a detail)
1503-05
Drawing
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
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Battle of Anghiari (Tavola Doria)
1503-05
Formerly private collection, Munich (lost)
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Aristotele da Sangallo, The Battle of Cascina,
engraving by Michelangelo.
The human figure is central to the scene and the dominant theme
is the representation of the nude in movement.
Michelangelo tends to "strain" the figures, exaggerating the
physical,
sculptural aspect, and providing a lesson in torsion and
foreshortening. |
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