Michelangelo Buonarroti, one of the greatest of the Italian Renaissance artists, was born in the small village of Caprese on this day in 1475.
"And you, who say it would be better to watch an anatomical demonstration than to see these drawings, you would be right, if it were possible to see all the things the drawings demonstrate in the dissection of a single body, which with all your intelligence you will not see, nor get knowledge of more than a few veins . . . as one single body did not last long enough, it was necessary to proceed bit by bit with many bodies, until I had completed the research; which I did twice in order to see the differences."
--Michelangelo writing in his notebooks as quoted in "The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel That Defined the Renaissance" by By Jonathan Jones
In 1504, the informal rivalry between two of the most celebrated artists in Florence became a direct competition. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint a scene from the ancient battle of Cascina on a wall of the Palazzo Vecchio—in the same room where Leonardo da Vinci had already been commissioned to paint a scene from another great Florentine victory, the battle of Anghiari. As the paintings progressed, Michelangelo set out to prove that his work, not Leonardo’s, embodied the future of art. In fact, the influence of both is visible in the works of subsequent generations of artists. Historian and art critic Jonathan Jones offers a riveting exploration of this great rivalry, which would become a turning point in the careers of both men, and brings to life an era of fascinating political and cultural transformation. READ an excerpt here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/205869/the-lost-battles/
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