Leonardo Michelangelo and Raphael

Visit to the Royal Academy January 2025 to see an exhibition of the three great masters of the High Renaissance......... 

Leonardo, Michelangelo 
and Raphael were all at large in Florence
fifteen four. With other artists they
discussed where David should be put, deciding
on Palazzo della Signoria,
or Palazzo Vecchio today.
While there young Rafa took the chance to study 
what his older colleagues had achieved
by sketching with brown ink on paper David, 
Leda and the Swan, and Virgin with
the Christ Child naked and contorting in
a way that came out in his Bridgewater 
Madonna which an RA steward stood by,
apprehending those who hadn't noticed
that photography was not allowed
of that particular exhibit, named
for Francis Egerton Duke Bridgewater
who bought it with the wealth he made from building
the canals of northern England. No
photography, another guard warned, of
Da Vinci's Burlington House Cartoon either 
in the darkened middle room, the name
deriving from the building purchased by
the government in eighteen fifty-four
to be the RA's home, though it had been
the owner of the work since sev'nteen ninety.

It's a chalk and charcoal drawing on 
eight rectangles of tinted paper mounted 
on to canvas. Mary's sitting on
St Anne's, her mothers, lap. They're smiling. Jesus,
clothed, is making awkwardly a sign 
at John the Baptist who is old enough 
to toddle. The curator thinks it may 
have been Da. Vinci's altarpiece proposal 
for the Gran Consiglio, the council
hall of the Palazzo where the David
was to stand. Fra Filippino Lippi
was commissioned, but in fifteen four 
he'd died and no one else had been approached. 
Vasari writes that people queued for two days
for a glimpse of Leonardo's latest
masterpiece. This work perhaps? Curators
at the RA make a case. Da Vinci
settled in Milan in fifteen six
and in his absence Fra Bartolomeo 
got the job. The RA auctioned the
Cartoon in nineteen sixty-two,
eight hundred grand the price (or twenty million
nowadays) and fearing it might go
abroad, the government and people raised
the sum and bought it for the National Gall'ry....

Meanwhile, back in fifteen four in Florence
the Palazzo of the Signoria 
hired Leonardo to depict
the Battle of the Anghiari (Florence v
Milan in fourteen forty) on 
a council chamber wall and on another
Michelangelo to paint the Battle 
of Cascina (Florence versus Pisa
thirteen sixty-four). The artists made
a lot of practice sketches but they never
got as far as paint on plaster. Finished
versions in the exhibition are 
by Bastiano de Sangallo who 
did Michelangelo's Cascina on 
a panel, calling it The Bathers (naked 
soldiers hear the call to arms and hurry
from the water) while an unknown artist
painted Leonardo's Anghiari
which a hundred years or so on, Rubens
owned, extended, coloured and retouched.
That's later; student Raphael in fifteen four
took the opportunity to draw.