In the summer of 1504, one commission pitted two titans of the Italian Renaissance against each other. On a single wall of Florence’s Great Council Chamber, inside what is now the Palazzo Vecchio, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were set to work cheek by jowl, both painting battle scenes nearly 60 feet wide.
The two men were natives of Florence who had recently returned to their home city, Leonardo from Milan and Michelangelo from Rome. Leonardo was the elder statesman. A genial and urbane painter and scientist, aged 52, he possessed a large following of friends and students, as well as a reputation for wearing flamboyant satin gowns and velvet capes. A contemporary doctor named Paolo Giovio said he was “by nature affable, sparkling, generous, with an extraordinarily beautiful face.” Michelangelo was the young pretender. A petulant sculptor and poet, aged 29, he had a crooked nose and a reputation for living in solitary squalor, rarely removing his dogskin shoes. “Rough and uncouth” is how Giovio described him.
