Signoria Battles

 “Painting their battles, Leonardo and Michelangelo would battle each other” (Goffen  150). It is evident through my early reading on Leonardo that he did not like Michelangelo much at all and wrote despising letters against him and his artwork. It wasn't until 1504 that “the paintings of Leonardo and Michelangelo were intended to be seen together, and judged together” (Goffen 150) in the Signoria (Florence) commission of the battles. Leonardo began the work of the Battle of Anghiari, while Michelangelo received the commission a year later to work on the Battle of Cascina. Michelangelo’s early draft of the Battling Horseman and Soldiers seems influenced from Leonardo’s Anghiari. It incorporates horses and soldiers in tangled, dynamic movement. “Leonardo interpreted the theme in a completely characteristic way, imposing unity and order on a scene of mayhem” (Goffen 152). In completion it is considered that Leonardo’s Battle “would have been a far more decorative work than Michelangelo’s, and far more painterly (152). Michelangelo’s Bathers is very sculptural and un-unified , each character tending to its own need.

The Battle of Anghiari is a lead up to the Florentine Victory by the capture of the Milanese flag. Michelangelo’s Bathers stages an event that occurred the day before the battle. I consider Leonardo’s figures to be greatly expressing the emotions attached to the episode depicted, whereas Michelangelo seems to focus again on the male nude and it lacks the emotive qualities. “The figures themselves were more important to Michelangelo than the narrative they were meant to enact” (154).

Michelangelo was pleased to hear Leonardo had abandoned the project for whatever reason, but it wasn’t much later that Michelangelo left to work on a series of Tondo’s that reflect his confrontations with Leonard, including the the Taddei, Pitti and Doni Tondos.

Michelangelo's Battling Horseman and Soldiers