In the history of the
world, is there any story of a great celebrity being “rubbed on the ground” by an even greater figure? A great event took place
in 1504.
Da Vinci and Michelangelo triggered a century of war that shook the history of art. Da Vinci, then 52 years old, was handsome, had a wide circle of friends, loved pink clothes, and was inseparable from his handsome assistant, who was 28 years younger.
Michelangelo, 29, was known for his bad temper, even the Pope, his slovenly work, his strict and stingy attitude towards himself, his unattractive and durable leather boots all year round, his fashion sense was zero by Leonardo Da Vinci’s standards, his hobbies were poetry, and his belief in celibacy. To be fair
, a great event took place in Florence in 1504.
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo gambled on their credibility, future and talent, triggering a century of war that shook art history.
Duel location: Florence, their common hometown.
Duel method: Painting murals for the hall of five hundred people in the old palace.
Winners will be rewarded with generous rewards and a steady stream of large project commissions, while losers will lose everything they have accumulated before.
This will be the most important creation in their star-studded life, and its significance is no less than that of the Mona Lisa and Sistine murals.
They will be forced to live in the same room and paint on two very similar subjects on two adjacent walls.
That is to say, every minute and every second after taking over the project, they will be compared and examined, and the creation will no longer be a private area, but a competition between two people.
It can be said that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are like two beasts in the same cage. Artists
all over Italy have prepared popcorn and are ready to see the play. The reason why people who
eat melons are so enthusiastic is that Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo hate each other.
Imagine what it’s like to sit at the next table to your nemesis at work and be compared to each other by your leader.
With an age difference of 23 years, Da Vinci and Michelangelo did not have the sympathy of geniuses, nor did they have the relationship of teachers and friends between generations. A favorite example of the love-hate relationship between
the two brothers is a recorded quarrel by an anonymous Florentine author.
One day, Da Vinci, dressed in a bright rose-colored robe, was surrounded by friends and strolled around Spini Square. When
cultural people go shopping, the topics they talk about are bound to be extraordinary. Several people actually argue about a poem by Dante.
Da Vinci must be the brightest star in the crowd. All the people
around him surrounded him and asked for his opinion.
Da Vinci was about to speak when Michelangelo, dressed in rustic clothes and with a sullen face, happened to pass by.
Da Vinci then said, “Let’s listen to Michelangelo.”.
We can’t imagine Da Vinci’s expression and tone at that time, so we can’t judge whether this is a modest and witty introduction of the younger generation into the dialogue, or a high school bad girl with a group of minions, blocking the ordinary but upright protagonist in the corner to provoke.
However, judging from Michelangelo’s reaction, the possibility of the former is very small.
According to records, Michelangelo replied angrily, “Say it yourself.”. Aren’t
you so good that you designed a bronze horse in Milan, but you ran away without even making a finished product.
With these words, he turned smartly away, leaving Leonardo where he was, his face flushed.
Da Vinci, K. O.
Despite being 23 years older, Da Vinci is often the one who is rubbed on the ground in a head-to-head confrontation. From this story
alone, Da Vinci is good at hurting people in a sentimental way, hurting the enemy’s ancestors for eight generations without damaging the old artist’s demeanor, but when he meets a simple and crude opponent like Michelangelo, it’s like a scalpel meeting a big stick, and he has no power to fight back.
Interestingly, Da Vinci recorded a story in his notebook with a date similar to his public disagreement with Michelangelo.
A man of honor has been humiliated.
His enemies said he was a bastard.
The respected man retorted, “I am an upright man according to the laws of nature and society.”.
And you, whether according to the laws of nature or society, are not far from the beast.
Da Vinci was a bastard.
His father, Arthur Piero, had him with a peasant woman named Caterina while he was growing oats.
It’s hard to imagine that Da Vinci wrote this note without pointing-it seems to be his distant reply to Michelangelo.
Perhaps Michelangelo mocked Da Vinci’s illegitimate birth during the dispute?
Maybe that’s why he was so red in the face that he couldn’t argue?
In short, the world-famous Da Vinci lost face during the quarrel and was speechless by a young man in his twenties. When he
got home, he must have thought about it over and over again, and suddenly he was inspired to figure out how to answer back, so he recorded it in his notebook to console himself. It was against this background that the battle of the century between
Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo began.
Art historian Niccolo Caponi said, “What do you think started the Renaissance?”?
The love of art? A desire for
knowledge?
No, it’s jealousy.
Competition and jealousy are positive in the context of the Renaissance. This is especially true of the fight
between geniuses.
Only genius can inspire genius.
At that time, there was a story of poisonous chicken soup, which was often used to illustrate the desirability of jealousy and competitiveness: Donatello, a famous sculptor, was loved by the Paduans, but chose to return to the critical Florence.
According to Donatello himself, he would stop making progress in praise, and only the hostile and sharp environment could stimulate him to continue to create. When Piero Soderini, the head of
the Florentine Republic, decided to put Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci in the same room to work, he probably listened to poisonous chicken soup.
In fact, the Republic only employed Leonardo Da Vinci at the beginning, and Michelangelo had nothing to do with it.
Come to think of it, these two are not cheap. The Republic of Florence is not what it used to be. The treasury is dry. It is not supposed to spend two money and hire two painters. Is it
difficult to observe that these two people love each other and kill each other at close range?
Soderini is also very helpless.
Da Vinci, in addition to genius, inventor, militarist, artist and other identities, also has a glittering title: procrastination maniac.
At the level of Leonardo da Vinci, there is no need to take the initiative, and the work will come to you.
A marchioness named Isabella Durst chased him from Mantua to Florence, but failed to persuade Leonardo to paint a complete portrait of himself.
Do you think everyone will be happy after he receives the manuscript?
Da Vinci lived to be sixty-seven years old, and no more than fifteen paintings have been handed down.
To get a finished painting out of his hand, the employer had to have money, leisure, patience, good luck, a long life and little nonsense.
It has been observed that Leonardo seemed to do nothing for a long time after he took the job.
The man was so calm that people thought he was sure to finish the work within the deadline, but when the deadline was approaching, they found that Leonardo Da Vinci was so justified in asking for an extension of the deadline.
What if I really can’t finish it, or I’m not interested in it?
Tear up the contract, pay the penalty and run away! When the leaders of the Florentine Republic hired Leonardo da Vinci to paint the Battle of Anghiari for the Hall of Five Hundred People in the Old Palace, they were in such a mixed mood.
No one wants Da Vinci to quit.
Da Vinci walked around here and there every day, studying history, reading documents, thinking, buying clothes, doing everything, but not drawing. As the days
passed and the Republic’s coffers emptied, Soderini tapped his head and came up with a genius preventive measure-he found Michelangelo, Da Vinci’s nemesis, and locked the two men together to fight.
Enemies face each other. It’s not tiring to work. If
two people stimulate each other, they may not be able to inspire some earth-shaking masterpiece.
Soderini thought he had a good idea.
Da Vinci: I thank you. The
candidate and the place have been decided. What are you
drawing?
It starts with the location of the Palazzo Vieja in Florence.
Why did Soderini and others hire people to design murals here? Florence is not very settled
these days. With
internal and external troubles, everything needs to be done.
The first event: In 1494, the Medicis were kicked out and Florence became a Republic.
A friar named Savonarola began to rule the city with harsh laws. Da Vinci and Michelangelo,
by the way, both recently returned to Florence for fear of being targeted by Savonarola.
Da Vinci, for example, made inventions, wrote mirror characters, was inseparable from handsome boys, and liked to wear beautiful clothes. He was afraid that he would not last long under Savonarola.
Among other things, Savonarola has changed the law so that gay people who used to pay only a fine are now at risk of their lives.
Da Vinci had a criminal record. In
April 1476, he was charged with sodomy, along with several other men, for developing an affair with an apprentice goldsmith.
In Florence more than 20 years ago, the case was quickly settled, but Savonarola would certainly not be so easy to talk to.
Anyway, before the founding of the Republic of Florence, Leonardo Da Vinci was already working in the field.
After Savonarola came to power, Da Vinci had no intention of returning to his hometown.
Michelangelo was a devout Christian and had great respect for Savonarola.
Sixty years later, he claimed he could still recall the sound of Savonarola’s sermons.
Piety is piety. Michelangelo is not a fool.
Remember his favorite subject for making art?
Naked man. Muscular naked
men tangled together.
This tendency can be seen in the early stage of his artistic creation.
Do you think Savonarola would have appreciated Michelangelo’s idea of seeing the light of God in his naked man in marble?
At this point, the two old brothers are on the same alert.
Like Da Vinci, Michelangelo chose to run away.
Public opinion is an elusive thing. The followers who
put Savonarola on the throne and shed tears for his sermons quickly turned their backs on him.
Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savona Lacrosse. After only four years
on the throne, Savonarola was arrested and eventually burned to the ground like the famous paintings and manuscripts in the Piazza della Signoria, where he had lit the fire of his vanity. Death
of Savonarola His ashes were carefully collected and thrown into the Arno River on the Old Bridge.
As a result, his followers were unable to make saints.
Savonarola’s death was complete and final. Florence, which
lost him, is about to enter the peak of the Renaissance-Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci are back. What does
the old palace mean? The spiritual legacy
of Savonarola, the embodiment of the Republic. After the expulsion of
the Medici, the Republic established a Council of Five Hundred at the suggestion of Savonarola. The hall of five hundred people in the
old palace was built for the meeting of these five hundred people.
The new government was formed, but I can’t say it went smoothly. Within
a few years, the spiritual leader Savonarola has been crushed in a real sense, and the war with the neighboring city of Pisa has continued, and I don’t know when it will end. Seeing that morale was low
from top to bottom, Soderini decided to spend some money and invite Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo to decorate the parliament hall.
Soderini’s intention was to let the two brothers paint two historical battles on the wall, one was the Battle of Anghiari between Florence and Milan, and the other was the Battle of Cassina between Florence and Pisa.
In both battles, Florence defeated the enemy cleanly (very rare for Florence, so commemorate it). No spirit
in the meeting? No clue about the
war?
It doesn’t matter! Looking up, the ancestors fought bravely on the battlefield, how could they not immediately surge in blood and spirit?
As it turned out, Soderini had a good idea, but Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo were not model workers who worked obediently.
His goading had its pros and cons, and created an unexpected chemistry between the two men’s drawings: both Leonardo and Michelangelo were somewhat off-topic.
Da Vinci painted slowly, but not passively.
He found the records written by those who witnessed the battle of Anghiari, studied the drawings left by his predecessors for the war, and read through the relevant history.
Da Vinci knew about war.
He has been to the battlefield and designed weapons and defense systems. In
1502, he accompanied Cesare Borgia on the expedition, painted his portrait, and observed the mood of the battlefield at close range.
Da Vinci’s Cesare seems to be a little spiritless. Cesare Borgia is a hero.
At this time, Machiavelli, the second leader of the Florentine Republic, was his fan brother and wrote The Prince as a positive example.
Cesare was ruthless, and when he fought, he was bloody and cruel. It was here that
Leonardo da Vinci got the first-hand information about the war.
Real war is invisible.
Da Vinci wrote. All that is
visible is confusion. The
battlefield was filled with dust, and the visibility became very low. No one could see the overall picture of the war. Everyone saw the debris, and in their ears were the crash of weapons, the tearing of clothes and flesh, and the screams of dying.
For Da Vinci, it was difficult for him to extract something glorious and praiseworthy from this picture of cannibalism. Save
me from the war.
Da Vinci wrote in his notebook, This is animal madness.
If you are touched by nature, you should know that the delicacy of human life is more than nature.
If you think destroying nature is wrong, then taking human life is an unforgivable crime.
This is Da Vinci’s answer sheet, the bloody “truth” he unearthed from the old paper pile and history. The
four warriors merged with their horses and became a veritable half-human beast.
In Da Vinci’s battle of Anghiari, it’s hard to tell the difference between the enemy and ourselves, the object of praise and the negative example.
It’s simple, because Da Vinci didn’t want to make that distinction.
In his understanding, both Milanese and Florentines are victims.
David’s face is unreal because it is an ideal face, the ideal of a perfect human being frozen in marble. In the Battle of Anghiari,
by contrast, Leonardo da Vinci painted the face of war-he showed an advanced sense of anxiety and a rather “modern” way of expression. The characters in the battle
of Anghiari are old, suffering, strangled by death, and suffering from the anxiety of the end of the golden age.
If it can be finished, it will probably be the best large-scale work of Leonardo Da Vinci, bar none. The partial battle of Anghiari
we see today is actually a copy of Rubens.
To be exact, it is a copy of a copy, which is transferred twice.
In addition to Rubens’s extraordinary painting skills, he formed a higher consensus with Leonardo Da Vinci on the abhorrence of war, so although not directly sketching, his copying can still convey the strong emotional impact of the original.
Da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari was Guernica in the sixteenth century.
Michelangelo probably felt desperate when he saw Leonardo’s drawings.
Yes, despair.
Michelangelo loathed mediocrity, and loathed genius still more.
It’s hard to trace where his dislike of Leonardo da Vinci came from.
Is it a disapproval of Leonardo Da Vinci’s personality and art?
Is it contempt?
Is it jealousy?
Michelangelo also tried to express the scene of the battle directly like Leonardo Da Vinci, but in any case he could not achieve the expressive force of the battle of Anghiari.
Even though the original manuscript has been lost, it can be seen from the reproduction that Leonardo Da Vinci’s control of intense emotions and the overall balance of the picture are almost impossible to surpass.
Years old.
He had never fought in the war, but he sincerely supported the government of the Republic and was proud of his family history. Make an
analogy. More than
four hundred years later, the First World War produced many immortal war poems. One of the
few poems celebrating the war, The Soldier, comes from Rupert Brooke, a soldier who died before the war began.
Horace said that it is sweet and glorious to die for the motherland.
But it’s an old lie, says Vilfried Owen, who actually fought in the war and came back from World War I.
It is undeniable that Michelangelo was moved by Da Vinci’s draft despite his different beliefs and political positions. Inside the
mural is the real battle of a hundred years ago, while outside the mural is a battle in which there are no casualties, but the stakes are amazing.
If he wants to win, Michelangelo must find another way to find a completely different angle from Leonardo Da Vinci.
He found it.
Michelangelo’s Battle of Cassina Michelangelo magnified his strengths and returned to his best theme, to put it crudely, the naked man.
According to records, this scene tells the story of soldiers bathing in the river, but the horn of war suddenly sounded.
This is the thrilling silence before the storm, and the characters have different expressions and tense muscles, which gives Michelangelo a chance to use his hands and feet.
This painting is like a sudden drop of turpentine, which freezes the dynamic of the insect’s struggle.
It’s hard to imagine that there is such a coincidence in the world.
Michelangelo liked to draw muscle men, and there was a real battle in the Cassina War when he was bathing by the river.
It is estimated that when Michelangelo saw this paragraph in the selection, he also clapped his thigh and shouted, “There is such a good thing.”.
Don’t worry, for Michelangelo, more incredible good things are yet to come.
Simply put, Da Vinci played himself to death. Before we
get to the biggest blunder in art history, we have to try to understand the differences between Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo.
It is hard to say whether the different understanding of art led to the discord between the two men or vice versa.
A perfect example is Michelangelo’s statue of David. It was in 1504 that they confronted each other again, after that unhappy encounter in the Pi
azza di Spini.
In this conflict, we can see what Michelangelo and Leonardo were like. Vasari, who wrote a biography
of Michelangelo, said that Michelangelo abandoned his project in Rome and rushed back to Florence because he heard that Soderini, then the “standard-bearer of justice” in Florence (the pompous title actually means the head of the city and the commander of the army), was preparing to hand over the statue of David to Leonardo Da Vinci.
Michelangelo was greatly stimulated and did not want to lose to Leonardo Da Vinci, so he rushed back to his hometown and cut Hu halfway.
The only doubt is that Vasari’s record is somewhat of a timeline mess.
Soderini was elected the standard-bearer of justice in 1502, while Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501.
Nevertheless, Michelangelo must have had the idea of taking over the statue of David when he left Rome, and he really didn’t want to hand over the project to Leonardo Da Vinci.
Although Da Vinci is famous for his paintings, he is also unambiguous in his sculptures.
His main project in Milan was to make a bronze horse with its front hooves in the air. Although the pouring was not completed because of the war, and the clay model of the sculpture was dragged by French soldiers to make an arrow target, Leonardo Da Vinci’s extraordinary accomplishments in sculpture could not be denied. Michelangelo,
by the way, mocked Da Vinci for doing only half of his work, referring to the bronze horse that eventually failed to appear.
Satire aside, Michelangelo could not have been ignorant of what Da Vinci was capable of. Bronze horses made
from Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches were not a big deal at that time. Michelangelo, who
specialized in sculpture, later painted the Sistine frescoes?
Imagine Da Vinci’s picture of David. I’m afraid the history of
art will be rewritten.
Michelangelo apparently could not tolerate this possibility.
Unlike Da Vinci, who had a wide range of hobbies and confused art with science, Michelangelo was driven by anger.
This kind of anger is not directed at a specific person, but a kind of burning, aggressive creativity and competitiveness.
Contemporary painter Vasari wrote biographies of both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
Although this Vasari is occasionally talkative, he is not ambiguous at all when he praises people, and he is full of praise when he describes Michelangelo. The concept of
“genius” emerged with the humanism of the Renaissance. A
brilliant individual who has single-handedly raised the entire human race to an unprecedented height. Vasari used the word when
describing both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Before he
carved the statue of David, Michelangelo, 23, had already become one of the greatest sculptors of our time because of the Pieta. The statue of Bacchus carved in his early
twenties, the statue of Pieta completed at the age of twenty-five, and the statue of David at the age of twenty-six are Michelangelo’s trilogy of growing up.
If he sculpted desire on Bacchus — death and the love of God while contemplating Pieta — then David’s eyes are the embodiment of the anger that has always driven him to improve. The statue of
David contains a part of Michelangelo’s soul.
In other words, that’s what Michelangelo wanted to be, his real autobiography and self-portrait.
For the new Florentine Republic, rebooting the statue of David at this point in time has another meaning. Who’s
David? The
biblical hero who led the Israelites to defeat the tyrant Goliath. Who is the tyrant that
the Florentines want to defeat?
The answer is self-evident.
From this point of view, carving David is tantamount to breaking with the Medici family, which is very kind to him, and involving himself in the complicated politics. The rulers of the
Republic tried to use David to bring stability to the turbulent Florence.
This kind of stability is close to moderation, which is different from Medici’s oppression or Savonarola’s religious fanaticism.
In other words, the leaders of the Republic hired Michelangelo not only to carve marble, but also to restore Florence’s “national character”: a vibrant, rebellious, masculine, patriarchal, godly, patriotic, serious, moral, and God-favored Florence. The statue of
David was so big because it was supposed to be placed on the top of the cathedral and looked up from the bottom. It
was supposed to be here, but because it was too heavy and beautiful, people thought it was a pity to put it on a high place far away from people. Where should I
put it?
The Republic called together artists and craftsmen in the city to discuss the placement of the statue of David, and Leonardo Da Vinci was among those invited.
The conversation was recorded verbatim by a clerk.
A man named Francesco suggested that the statue of David be erected in the Piazza della Signoria, while the other statue in the Piazza, Judith of Donatello, was removed.
Francesco said that every time he saw the statue of Judith, he would shiver and feel a kind of fear and disgust.
Why is that? Giudice
of Donatello Giudice is supposed to have many similarities to David.
She is a heroine in the Bible. When the men of the tribe could not retreat, she took a maid to the enemy camp and cut off the head of the enemy general Herovenes to save the country from danger.
Like David, Judith is also a hero who defeats the strong by surprise. It is appropriate
to use her theme to emphasize patriotism or defeat tyrants.
The only problem is that the story of Judith’s killing of Herovenes is also the story of a woman killing a man.
No wonder Francesco gets goose bumps every time he sees Judith.
He put himself in the role of Hrovnis and felt Judith’s cold blade on his neck.
He felt that there was something wrong with putting such a statue of a woman killing a man in a public place, and that the horoscope of the statue when it was formed was not auspicious, which was not a good omen.
Since the black Judith has the magic of witchcraft, it is better to replace her with the white David.
It has to be said that David and Judith are an interesting set of opposites.
Men and women. The muscular
king and the slender widow.
The slingshot and the blade.
Naked body and long skirt veil. Life
at its zenith and death at its fury.
Francesco also said that Judith was a “symbol of death.”. The
painter Botticelli, who was a member of the jury, apparently disagreed with Francesco.
Botticelli said, is it not good to keep both? One
here and one there. Why do you have to take Judith out after so many years?
At this point, a man named Sangaro spoke.
He said that instead of putting the statue of David at the door of the city hall, he should move it to a place called the Loggia of Mercenaries. What was Da Vinci doing while
everyone was arguing?
Like a casual student, he drew casually on a piece of paper and was not eager to intervene in the conversation.
He is sketching a picture of David.
Da Vinci’s Sketch Da Vinci’s subtle attitude toward the statue of David is evident in this sketch.
Some scholars say that Leonardo Da Vinci deliberately painted David’s eyes a little silly.
Muscularity and appearance are still faithfully restored, but temperament is obviously different from sculpture.
Da Vinci deliberately emphasized the heaviness of David’s body, but refused to show the vitality and brilliance of the original work.
What can I say?
Da Vinci painted David as a dazed, simple-minded man on Michelin tires, and he enjoyed it.
Imagine Da Vinci taking his time to sit underneath and doodle while the artists air their views, like a schoolboy drawing glasses and a mustache on a photograph of an annoying person. As
I said just now, someone suggested putting the statue of David in the mercenary loggia.
Several attendees chimed in, saying, “Actually, David is scary, too. You look at him like he’s staring at you.”. Placing the statue of
David in the mercenary loggia is like putting a wild animal in a cage, which not only weakens the political nature of placing the statue directly in front of the city hall, but also neutralizes the impact of David. Satisfied
with his sketch, Da Vinci decided it was time to say, “I agree. The statue of David should be in the Mercenary Loggia.”.
“Da Vinci said,” But it should be placed in front of the smaller wall, yes, the wall where the tapestry is usually placed.
In addition, the statue should be decorated in a decent way, so that the officials will not be affected during the meeting.
You think about it.
Now we can be absolutely sure that Da Vinci had absolutely no good intentions when he stopped Michelangelo in the Piazza Spini.
Listen to this tone, is it not too much to call it a master of Yin and Yang? What
Da Vinci means is that a naked man who glares in public is not a good influence, right?
Da Vinci was definitely not a conservative man.
He said that simply to make trouble for Michelangelo.
Da Vinci had no problem with painting a naked man, and he painted it cheerfully and without scruple.
Da Vinci had a painting called St. John the Baptist. There was a sketch
in his notebook, and according to the face, it was roughly St. John, but it was like this: Uh.. If you draw a picture of the same person like this, I’m afraid you’ll have to make a mosaic today.
Let’s go back and look at the sketch that Da Vinci drew for David.
In the lower half of the body, Da Vinci’s brush strokes are blurred, and the statue’s silhouetted body is reduced to a few ink dots. Da Vinci, who
usually painted nudes without any psychological burden, actually coded David manually for fear that he would catch cold, so he thoughtfully added a pair of thong underpants: indecent.
Let’s imagine Da Vinci’s sincere expression and sincere and bitter tone during the meeting.
But in the end, Da Vinci’s strange attitude failed to achieve the desired effect. Giudice
of Donatello was removed for making certain people uncomfortable.
David replaced her in front of the old palace and became the symbol of the Republic.
Michelangelo liked strong muscles, while Leonardo da Vinci preferred smoky painting.
Michelangelo loved nudity, while Leonardo da Vinci appreciated the ambiguity of layers of clothing.
Da Vinci also wrote a paragraph in his notebook mocking Michelangelo’s painting techniques: “Oh, a painter who only pays attention to anatomical structure, you try to show all the emotions of the characters through nudity. Be careful. If you get into a dead end and painstakingly depict bones, tendons and muscles, you will become a wooden and stiff craftsman.”.
In short, the contradiction between these two men cannot be reconciled.
Now, we can talk about the Oolong incident that ended the century’s war and indirectly caused Leonardo Da Vinci to leave Italy. As we said
before, Da Vinci screwed himself up.
He had not yet learned from the peeling walls of the Last Supper and continued to experiment with innovations at the Battle of Anghiari. The
traditional, time-tested mural technique is to paint in wet slaked lime, allowing the colors to blend with the walls.
Da Vinci, the rebellious elder brother, rejected the traditional method because the wet slaked lime dried quickly and painted anxiously, which was not in line with his leisurely painting style.
Da Vinci decided to treat the walls with wax and use oil paints to paint directly on the dry walls from bottom to top. So far, there are
no major problems. The
bad thing is that Da Vinci put two stoves in front of the frescoes to try to dry the wet paint.
The paint didn’t dry, but it melted.
Beautiful colors flow in all directions and eventually mix into a pool of oil.
A year’s hard work has come to naught.
That is to say, Da Vinci cheated himself and lost the competition?
Not exactly. When their
drafts were on display, artists from all over Italy came to see them, and visitors came in an endless stream.
The Old Palace is known as the “school of the world” because of its collection of two immortal works, which has provided inexhaustible creative inspiration for later artists.
Among the onlookers, there was a young man who couldn’t take his eyes off. When
his teacher saw Michelangelo’s muscular naked man, he was so angry that he almost lost his breath, but the young man was fascinated.
He was Raphael who painted the School of Athens.
It can be said that these two murals, which have disappeared, have nurtured the following Renaissance. It is impossible to say
whether Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci will win or lose.
As a result, there is no winner in this gamble.
Da Vinci at least drew a few strokes, but he was baked by himself.
Michelangelo was taken to Rome to build a mausoleum at the command of Pope Julius II before he had time to write. The Republic of
Florence is undoubtedly the biggest loser.
They got two fragmentary, unfinished walls, which had to be displayed as they were because the artistic value of the master’s drawings was amazing and could not be concealed or erased.
But for Soderini, the war he started is clear.
Not knowing whether he had lost face or interest, Da Vinci began to prepare to run away and had already found his next home. The king of
France was eager to personally vouch for him and save him from the plight of Florence.
Soderini did not like Da Vinci’s battle of Anghiari.
He hired Da Vinci to paint a passionate picture of war to stimulate the patriotic feelings of the viewers.
Who knew that Leonardo Da Vinci presented the war in such a cruel and realistic way that everyone would become a pacifist after seeing this painting. In contrast
, the youthful vitality and tension expressed in “The Battle of Cassina” are more in line with the situation of the Republic, similar to the vibrant image of David, and more in Soderini’s mind.
It can be said that from the beginning, Soderini had a judgment on the winning or losing of the competition.
When Da Vinci was preparing, he invited another painter who had a bad relationship with him to paint the same subject on the adjacent wall, which was somewhat disrespectful to Da Vinci.
We can even understand that from the beginning, the government of the Republic had high hopes for Michelangelo.
Soderini’s attitude towards the two men is clear from his replies to the French nobleman Amboise and the Pope. In a cold and angry letter to Amboise in Milan
, Soderini said: Da Vinci did not do what he promised.. He received a lot of money, but produced only limited results.
We won’t ask him for anything more.
This painting should have been done to please our people. The implication was
that Soderini was dissatisfied with the fact that Da Vinci preferred to go to the court to dress the nobles and the royal family, but was not content to serve the people of the Republic.
In contrast, in his letter to Pope Julius II, Soderini put in a good word for Michelangelo, saying that he was an “amazing young man” and apologized for his occasional rude behavior from Michelangelo’s standpoint, saying that he was young and ignorant, so that Julius II would not take it to heart.
Completely the tone of a loving elder.
One side is “collecting money and not doing anything,” and the other side is “amazing young people.”.
In Soderini’s mind, the result of the competition was obvious.
It has to be said that Soderini had a big misunderstanding about Da Vinci. Although
Da Vinci had procrastination, he was definitely not a snobbish person, nor did he choose jobs according to the amount of remuneration, and when he saw that the other party was an aristocrat, he jumped on it. We mentioned
earlier that Isabella Durst, the Marchioness of Mantua, rich, powerful, prestigious, and a leading figure in artistic patronage, bombarded her with letters and stalked her for a long time without persuading Leonardo Da Vinci to paint a serious portrait of her.
Meanwhile, Leonardo returned to Florence on his own initiative to paint the Mona Lisa, the wife of an unknown merchant.
To paint an ordinary Florentine resident instead of a Mantuan nobleman is to say that he has great good intentions and expectations for his homeland and the newly established Republic.
Who knew that they broke up in the end.
Da Vinci returned to Milan and became Louis VII’s official painter and engineer. The
king of France is very loyal.
After the Florentines expressed their indifference to Da Vinci, the King of France wrote a letter to the government of the Republic to the effect that “Da Vinci is very popular here. If you don’t want him, I will protect him.”.
The Republic abandoned Leonardo da Vinci and pinned all its hopes on Michelangelo, only to be stepped in by the Pope.
The Pope asked Michelangelo to repair his tomb by name. Who dares to question the authority of the Pope in the whole of Italy?
So Michelangelo had to abandon the battle of Cassina and go to Rome to serve the Pope.
Julius II was a brilliant and resourceful pope. Although he was the leader of the clergy, he never punished those who were empty. He directly led troops to attack anyone who was not pleasing to the eye. He was called the “Pope of War.”.
The violent pope snatched Michelangelo away, but left him out to dry. He was
indeed the Pope, and he would rather rob people and leave them alone than let the Florentines benefit from them.
Michelangelo asked for an audience several times and was told, “The Pope is busy. Stay where you are.”.
At this time, Julius II was planning to build a new St. Peter’s Basilica (known today as St. Peter’s Basilica). Michelangelo was responsible for most of the projects related to the old church, and the Pope did not care much about him.
Michelangelo noticed that the Pope was lukewarm to him, and his first reaction was that “someone is trying to frame me,” suspecting that his colleagues had slandered the Pope out of jealousy.
To say that Michelangelo’s bad temper is also a bit deserved.
On one occasion, the Pope went to inspect the progress of his work, probably because he thought he was working a little slowly, so he urged the progress.
As a result, Michelangelo, who was on the scaffolding, stuck his neck and said, “It will be done when it is done.”. Why do
you care so much?
The Pope was furious: “Do you believe that I will pull you down from the shelf?” Michelangelo, after being frustrated by the Pope, announced that he had quit and gone straight back to his mother’s home in Florence.
Julius II probably never had such a challenge in his life, but it came from a sculptor who was only thirty-one years old.
He thought about it. If you don’t come, I’ll go.
Julius II went to Michelangelo and settled down in Bologna, not far from Florence, to deal with political affairs.
Michelangelo knew that he could not escape, so he had to bite the bullet and apologize. In the middle of the
walk, I don’t know whether it was out of fear or pride, I turned around and came back.
It was not until the end of 1506 that Michelangelo was ready to go to Florence to face the Pope.
The Pope said coldly, “Yes, you can.”.
You should have come to us, but now we have to invite you specially. The
proud Michelangelo knelt on the ground and begged the Pope for forgiveness, saying that he had run away because he could not bear to be bossed around by his servants.
No matter how amazing an artist is, no matter how arrogant he is, he will kneel down in front of the Pope. After
returning to the Pope, Michelangelo cast a huge bronze statue of Julius II, three times larger than a normal person, holding a sword, and placed it in Bologna.
For comparison, Leonardo Da Vinci failed to cast the bronze horse.
We can say that Michelangelo once again did what Leonardo Da Vinci failed to do. At the end
of his reign, the statue was torn down and melted down by the angry people of Bologna.
Let’s go back to Florence-what to do when the two walls of the five-hundred-person Council chamber are still empty? The heads of
the Florentine Republic will soon no longer have to face this dilemma, because the Republic will soon cease to exist.
In 1512, Giuliano Medici returned to Florence. Anyone with
a discerning eye knows that the return of Medici is the result of the tacit approval of the Pope and the game of multiple powers, in other words, the Florentine Republic was sold as a bargaining chip.
Soderini fled and Machiavelli was arrested.
Michelangelo was willing to turn his back on the system of the Republic that the Medici family, which he had been so kind to, wanted to maintain. After bowing
to Julius II, you have to bow to Medici.
He had to make peace with the returning Medici family to atone for his sins and design four sculptures in the new altar room for the Medici Chapel. The
government has changed, and the mural project in the old palace is certainly impossible to continue. Is it really a coincidence in the war that the manuscripts of
Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo were lost at the same time, and later generations can only figure out the elegance of the original paintings from reproductions and copies? There are various versions
circulating, some saying that the artists who left for fame were eager to chase the stars and destroyed the canvas in order to collect it, and some saying that Leonardo Da Vinci’s friends deliberately destroyed Michelangelo’s manuscript in order to give him a breath.
But in the end, it was politics that destroyed the manuscript. The
returning Medici hated the Old Palace and the Hall of Five Hundred because they were symbols of the Republic.
In retaliation, the Medicis systematically destroyed and covered the frescoes in the Hall of Five Hundred.
As if deliberately ironic, Cosimo I hired Vasari to repaint the walls of the hall to celebrate his military exploits. The lingering sound of the century’s war between
Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo has completely dissipated.
Da Vinci could no longer receive large-scale public projects, but he lived a comfortable and dignified life, free to study his wonderful brain holes, and eventually died as a painter and engineer for the King of France. In his prime
, Michelangelo was about to enter his creative peak, preparing to paint his most well-known works in the Sistine Chapel.
On the surface, the intersection between the two ends here.
The two elder brothers failed to become friends. I don’t know whether they are too similar or not. Michelangelo, who
also came from a humble background, maintained a close relationship with his father and family, while Leonardo Da Vinci had a weak family relationship.
His father left him no inheritance and inherited a property from his close uncle, but his brothers and sisters jointly sued him in court.
Let’s talk about sexual orientation.
Da Vinci’s emotional expressions in his paintings are extremely subtle, but he does not hide himself in his private life, whether it is his dress sense or his friends.
Michelangelo’s human body is sensual and sexy, but he chooses celibacy in his life. When
he was fifty years old, about the same age as Da Vinci when he was on bad terms with him, he began to exchange romantic letters with a young nobleman, forming a platonic relationship.
As for faith, Michelangelo was a devout believer, while Leonardo Da Vinci was ambiguous.
Some scholars compare the two touching fingers in The Creation of Adam with the delicate uterus sketch in Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook to compare their attitudes towards life and soul.
For Da Vinci, life was something more concrete than love of God. It has been said for a long time
that Leonardo Da Vinci went into self-exile to the French royal family because of his competition with Michelangelo.
Scholar Jones has come up with a more likely hypothesis: that Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes conveyed a signal that Leonardo received.
This signal, like a wake-up call, made Leonardo leave Italy: the art of the sixteenth century was religious art.
Da Vinci mentioned his concerns in his letter, and in such an atmosphere, his dissection work is bound to encounter resistance.
Dissecting a corpse is always a felony. Da Vinci and Michelangelo both dissected, but for different purposes.
Michelangelo dissected to paint and sculpt, while Leonardo Da Vinci dissected to dissect to satisfy curiosity and thirst for knowledge.
Da Vinci was out of step with the patriotic sentiments of the Florentine Republic, and probably heretical in Rome.
From this point of view, Da Vinci was indeed driven out of Italy by Michelangelo. The
sacred and magnificent Sistine frescoes, like David, contain something that makes Leonardo extremely uncomfortable.
Later generations regarded Da Vinci as a representative figure of the Renaissance and called him one of the “Three Masters of the Renaissance.”.
But Da Vinci was always a bit out of step with his contemporaries and art. Some people
always say that he is like a traverser, no wonder, he invented tanks and fortress-like prototype fortifications, always wanted to fly to the sky with the help of aircraft, and even like a God to change the direction of the river. How do
we judge an artist?
In terms of practicality and completion, Michelangelo left more finished products than Leonardo Da Vinci.
Da Vinci, by contrast, left behind no more than fifteen finished paintings and a few drafts.
In a world where schedule, efficiency, and seeing is believing, how much weight do romantic, naive, and dreamy ideas carry?
Michelangelo and Raphael most often portrayed beautiful, glorious and eternal things, and Leonardo Da Vinci was a little more pessimistic and humorous than those two. The Battle
of Anghiari is the best example of this pessimism.
When it’s time for praise, Da Vinci, like an untimely debunker, paints death, aging and crisis of faith on Piccinino’s face like a mystery. The Battle
of Anghiari is a question mark, a pessimistic fable fully fulfilled in Florence.
Twenty years from now, the Florentines will be engulfed by war again.
Michelangelo was never completely free from the specter of Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1527, the Medici were again driven out of Florence by the people singing the Savonarola prayer, but this time they returned only two years later.
This time, Michelangelo chose to resist, standing with the Republic against the mighty Medici army.
He was in charge of the fortifications and helped build a fortress capable of firing cannons.
Without him, Fiorentina would not have been able to defend for nine months. In contrast
, Da Vinci had so many fantastic ideas related to military affairs, but none of them was really reused to achieve the degree of completion and effect that Michelangelo accomplished in 1529.
Did Michelangelo win?
In 1504, Leonardo da Vinci designed a series of fortifications at Piombino, including a series of raised earth slopes, ditches and riverbanks reinforced with wooden sticks, according to the scholar Jones. The combination of this
defense system is both strong and flexible.
This was the very method of defence used by Michelangelo in 1529. The people of the
Republic held out for nine months. It was not the collapse of the external fortifications that
broke them, but the hunger and plague within.
This brutal battle will become the pattern of future European campaigns. To put
it cruelly, if Michelangelo’s design had not been so effective and sustained for so long, Florence would not even have lost so many people.
Michelangelo had to sue Medici for peace again. Fearfully, he picked up the hammer and chisel and began designing the mausoleum for Giuliano Medici, just
as he had been forced by the Pope to cast bronze statues decades earlier.
Michelangelo is old.
He helped design the new St. Peter’s Basilica.
Da Vinci has never handled such an epoch-making large-scale project.
Did Michelangelo win?
He used the plan of Donato Bramonte, insisting on the dome over St. Peter’s Basilica.
So where did Bramante get his idea? A series of conversations with Leonardo da Vinci
many years ago. So much for the vaults of
St. Peter?
Even the paintings no longer exist. What else can we do but piece together Rashomon-like stories in indirect materials?
It wasn’t until 2012 that scientist Maurizio Seracini came up with a hypothesis.
He said that behind Vasari’s frescoes, there might be an authentic painting of the Battle of Da Vinci Anghiari! Seracini used thermal imaging technology to reproduce the architectural structure of the 500-person hall in the old palace at that time.
He claimed that the Battle of Anghiari was hidden on the eastern wall of the hall.
In the picture of Vaselli, there is a soldier holding a small green flag.
It says: cercatrova.
Cercatrova means “almost found.”.
Seracini believes that this is Vasari’s code for posterity.
Da Vinci’s original paintings are in Vasari’s frescoes.
Seracini eventually got permission to punch holes in Vasari’s frescoes to look for remnants of Leonardo’s paint.
Although he did find ancient pigments, Seracini had to face many obstacles from the academic circles. Scholars around the
world have signed a petition refusing to damage Vasari’s work because of the ethereal act of dream-chasing. “I’d rather take Vasari down and look inside, because I think he’s overpraised,” said Capponi, an
art historian.
In any case, the project was stopped.
Who knows, there may still be an authentic Da Vinci, perhaps his best work, that has not yet seen the light of day.
This idea can not help but fill people with hope and despair at the same time. Soon after
the competition in full swing, Raphael, who jostled with countless European artists in the hall of 500 people to see the miracle of the master, grew up.
He created a painting called “The School of Athens”.
Raphael gave Plato the face of Leonardo da Vinci and pointed a finger to the sky.
He gave the face of Michelangelo to Heraclitus, who sat alone at his desk in contemplation.
There is also an Easter egg. This Heraclitus wears Michelangelo’s iconic boots, which are not beautiful but very durable.
These two would roll their eyes if they knew that they would still have to love and kill their old rivals in Raphael’s paintings five hundred years later.
Secular power comes and goes like running water, human will is capricious, but the beauty of art is eternal.
Jiu ‘Gong. Attention, don’t get lost ~
