Description
Leonardo vs. Michelangelo — the duel of the century. In 1504, the city of Florence set the two greatest artists of the age against each other: rival battle murals for the Palazzo Vecchio’s council hall. In The Lost Battles, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones tells the gripping story of the artistic duel — and of the masterpieces that vanished without a trace.
Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina were never finished, surviving only in copies, sketches, and legend — yet the competition electrified Florence and defined both careers. Jones reconstructs the rivalry, the civic politics, the technical experiments (Leonardo’s doomed encaustic method melted down the wall), and the lost works with the pacing of a thriller.
Art history as page-turner — essential for Renaissance lovers, and irresistible for anyone who enjoys genius behaving badly. The greatest art contest ever staged, and its masterpieces lost forever.
In 1504, the city of Florence set the two greatest artists of the age against each other. In The Lost Battles, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones tells the gripping story of the artistic duel between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo — commissioned to paint facing walls of the Palazzo Vecchio, each determined to outdo the other.
n
n
Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina were never finished, and both masterpieces are now lost. Yet Jones argues that this clash was the defining moment of Renaissance art — the instant when painting became a battlefield of genius. Drawing on surviving drawings and contemporary accounts, he reconstructs the rivalry in all its intensity: the older Leonardo, urbane and secretive, against the young Michelangelo, brooding and ferocious.
n
n
Vivid, learned, and utterly compelling, The Lost Battles is essential reading for anyone who loves Renaissance art — the story of the competition that changed art forever, and of two geniuses whose rivalry still echoes through the centuries.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet