The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel That Defined the Renaissance

From one of Britain’s most respected art historians, art critic of The Guardian—the galvanizing story of a sixteenth-century clash of titans, the two greatest minds of the Renaissance, working side by side in the same room in a fierce competition.

In 1504, the informal rivalry between two of the most celebrated artists in Florence became a direct contest. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint a scene from the ancient battle of Cascina on a wall of the Palazzo Vecchio—in the same room where ...