Rubens, copy of The Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo. The Battle of Anghiari, 1603

I recently visited a fine exhibition considering the artistic environment in Florence around 1504, when Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael were all working in the city. (‘Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael’ is at The Royal Academy, London until 16 February.)

The show illustrates how competition and rivalry, allied to a willingness to learn, can spur creative people on to achieve great things.

Leonardo, the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant girl, was born in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, 20 miles from Florence. A painter, engineer, scientist and philosopher, he worked for a time in Milan, where he created The Last Supper. In 1504, back in Florence, he was 52 and applying himself to his portrait of Lisa del Gioncondo, the ‘Mona Lisa.’

Sebastiano da Sangallo, copy of a section of **The Battle of Cascina by** Michelangelo - c. 1542. Oil on wood, 77 x 130 cm. Holkham Hall, Norfolk

Michelangelo came from a reputable Florentine banking family. He preferred to work as a sculptor and had carved the Pietà in Rome. In 1504, the 29-year-old had just completed his 17-foot-high marble statue of the biblical warrior king David, a commission from the Florentine state.

Leonardo and Michelangelo were quite different characters. Leonardo was sociable and outgoing. Michelangelo was grumpy and truculent. (He had smashed his nose in a fight with another sculptor.)

There was clearly no love lost between them. Michelangelo taunted Leonardo for his failure to finish the huge bronze equine statue assigned by Duke Ludovico of Milan. (Ludovico ended up giving the bronze away to forge cannons.) Leonardo, in turn, described Michelangelo’s representation of muscles as like ‘bags of walnuts.’ Invited, along with other artists, to advise the Florentine authorities on the appropriate location for David, Leonardo suggested an inconspicuous place at the back of the Loggia della Signoria – and that its genitals should be covered.

Perhaps with an eye on exploiting the great artists’ rivalry, the Florentine government commissioned first Leonardo and then Michelangelo to create murals glorifying the republic in the newly constructed council hall of the Palazzo della Signoria. (The contract was witnessed by Nicolo Machiavelli, the council secretary.) Leonardo was allocated the Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo the Battle of Cascina.

At the exhibition, we can examine their preparatory drawings, in the original and in later copies.

Michelangelo -Taddei Tondo c. 1504–05 Carrara marble. Royal Academy, London

Sketching in red chalk and brown ink, Leonardo presents snarling cavalrymen on rearing horses. Swords fly, bodies writhe, soldiers tumble under foot. We are in the brutal heart of the hostility.

Michelangelo sets a completely different tone. The Florentine army has been resting, swimming in the Arno, when the Pisans attack. We see naked soldiers clambering out of the river, scrambling over rocks, looking over their shoulders, dragging their clothes onto damp limbs. The urgency is palpable.

The contrast in the approaches of the two great artists is striking. Leonardo is interested in the bestial face of war, contorted and grimacing. Michelangelo concerns himself with human contours, muscle and skin, the eroticism of the heroic body.

Late in 1504 Raphael arrived on the scene. The son of a court artist, he had been raised and trained in Urbino, and was renowned for his charm, a quality that came in useful when dealing with clients. He was in his early 20s and eager to ‘spend some time in Florence to learn.’

Raphael -***The Bridgewater Madonna*** c.1507. Originally on oil and wood, but later transferred to canvasae

We can observe Raphael’s appetite for study. He drew Michelangelo’s David, making the hands smaller than they appear on the statue. He sketched Leonardo’s Leda and the Swan, and borrowed a pleasing detail from the work in his painting of Saint Catherine, pushing her left leg before her right.

Raphael also copied Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child, the ‘Taddei Tondo.’ In this marble relief (the only Michelangelo marble held in Britain) the infant John the Baptist presents the baby Jesus with a flapping goldfinch - a symbol of the Passion. Christ flinches, but also looks back at the bird, accepting his fate. When preparing for his own painting of the Virgin and Child, the ‘Bridgewater Madonna’, Raphael sketched a series of restless, twisting infants that were clearly inspired by the ‘Taddei Tondo.’

Raphael teaches us that, when we are young, we should study the greats, learn from our elders, analyse their technique and adapt it in our own work. Leonardo and Michelangelo teach us that, as we mature, we should embrace conflict and creative rivalry; measure ourselves against the best - because competition pushes us to be confident in our own distinctiveness.

In the event, neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo finished the frescos for the Palazzo della Signoria. Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by the Pope, Leonardo returned to Milan, and the fragile Florentine republic fell to the returning Medici. Sometimes life gets in the way.

'I used to worry because another fella
Tried to steal my girl away.
I used to toss and turn
All through the night,
The thought of it kept me awake.
Every time she walked by him,
She was all in his eye.
She set him straight, she told him
I had to be her only guy.
That's why I said:
Competition ain't nothing, y’all,
If you got a love that's true.
Competition ain't nothing, boy,
They just keep on loving you.’
Little Carl Carlton, 'Competition Ain't Nothin’' (L Hiram / W Webb)

No. 502