Leonardo's Great Battle-Piece a Conjectural Reconstruction

* The basis of the present essay was a lecture delivered under the auspices of the Royal Academy in London in 1951 in connection with the quincentenary exhibition of Leonardo's works. The subject was allotted to me at the suggestion of Sir Kenneth Clark, and to him and to Professor Gombrich I owe a substantial debt for their help and encouragement.

Abstract

THERE can be little doubt that the battle-pieces commissioned of Leonardo da Vinci and of Michelangelo in the first decade of the sixteenth century would have constituted, had either been completed, the culmination of Florentine painting, and, as such, would have ranked among the two or three supreme masterpieces of painting in any age. The commission itself—the decoration of the Council Hall of the new Florentine Republic—was the most important within the power of the state to give, and in the case of Leonardo, who alone is the subject of this essay and who was given the contract for one half of the work somewhat before Michelangelo embarked on the other, we have Vasari's word that contemporary opinion considered the man well matched with the opportunity. This is to say, the Florentines felt that the return of Leonardo in 1500 to his native city after nearly twenty years' absence at Milan should not be allowed to pass without his giving some important manifestation of those powers which were now generally recognized, and, conversely, that the decoration of the Council Chamber—which had been completed, structurally, in 1497, and whose walls were still bare—was of such moment that no other artist then available should be entrusted with it.