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 Leonardo da Vinci had already been commissioned to paint a scene from another great Florentine victory, the battle of Anghiari. As the paintings progressed, Michelangelo set out to prove that his work, not Leonardo’s, embodied the future of art--but in fact, the influence of both would become visible in the works of subsequent generations of artists. The Lost Battles is a riveting look at one of history’s most resonant exchanges of ideas and offers a whole new understanding of an age and those at its center.