Leonardo was one the greatest artists of the Renaissance. But he was not alone. The Renaissance in Italy was such a special time because it produced so many talented artists. Besides Leonardo, the two other greatest names belong to Raphael and Michelangelo.
Raphael was a great admirer of Leonardo’s. Michelangelo was not. He didn’t like Leonardo, and Leonardo didn’t like him. It is hard to imagine two men who were more different. Michelangelo came from a well-off family but didn’t wash or change his clothes often. He slept on the floor of his studio. He was also short, had a crooked back, and a quick temper. Leonardo was handsome, well-dressed, neatly groomed, and charming.
Twenty-seven years younger than Leonardo, Michelangelo had become famous for his huge statue of David. Leonardo didn’t think the statue was all that great. Or at least that’s what he said.
In turn, Michelangelo made fun of Leonardo in public for never finishing his huge statue. He said, “You made a model of a horse you could never cast in bronze and which you gave up, to your shame. And the stupid people of Milan had faith in you!”
When both were asked to paint a wall in the main government building of Florence, it became a fierce contest. The walls were to picture different scenes from famous battles that Florence had won.
Again, the paintings were to be frescoes, pictures painted directly onto the walls. (The last time Leonardo had tried this was in the monastery for The Last Supper.) The room was giant-size, and Leonardo’s fresco was to measure about sixty feet by twenty-four feet. He began by making many drawings. He wanted a scene full of action, with horses rearing and soldiers fighting. The horror of war would come through, too: the dead. The wounded howling in pain. The dust and dirt and blood.
After Leonardo decided on the design, he made a cartoon, which was transferred onto the wall. Then he set up a scaffold with a platform that could move. This would allow him to work in comfort.
The trouble was, Leonardo still did not want to make a fresco in the usual way. Once again he tried an experiment. He found a way to use oil paints with coal fires to make the paint dry quickly. He had tested out the experiment on a wall in his studio, and it had worked. But the test was done on a small paint-covered area. Leonardo needed it to work on great big areas—and it didn’t. If the fires were placed close to the painting, it melted. If they were placed far away, there wasn’t enough heat to make it dry. The top part of his battle scene ended up black with smoke; other parts ran. After three years of hard work, Leonardo was left with nothing but a great big mess.
As for Michelangelo, he didn’t finish his wall, either. Maybe that was some comfort for Leonardo. In 1504, Michelangelo was called to Rome by the pope to start other jobs. One was to paint the ceiling of the pope’s chapel. We know it as the Sistine Chapel.
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