LEONARDO AND MICHELANGELO IN FLORENCE. THE SECOND PERIOD

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo and Leonardo returned to Florence, where they created absolute masterpieces of world art. Soon, however, Milan and Rome recall the two artists.

by Fabio Massimo Penna

In 1501 Michelangelo returned to Florence after four Roman years and received the important commission for the colossal statue of David . The artist rejects the traditional image of David's beardless youth from the works of Donatello and Verrocchio to sculpt a young man with a powerful physique, set on chiasmus or polycletic weighting with right arm and left leg resting and left hand and right leg carrying. The sculpture of the biblical hero is immediately identified with the civic virtues of the city of Florence such as strength, freedom and social conscience. The symbolic value of civil qualities is underlined by the size of the imposing head, seat of the activity of thought that precedes practical action. Another absolute masterpiece of this period is the Tondo Doni (1503-1504). Previously the Caprese artist had sculpted two rounds (in 1502 the Tondo Taddei and in 1503 the Tondo Pitti ) in marble while the round Doni is a tempera painting on wood. In the foreground is depicted, in a pyramidal composition, the Holy Family with Joseph who hands the Child to the Virgin while San Giovannino watches the scene from behind a balustrade. In the background stands a group of naked men in front of a bare landscape. In 1503 the gonfalonier of the republic Pier Soderini had commissioned a fresco from Leonardo for the Sala del Gran Consiglio in Palazzo Vecchio and the following year he asked Michelangelo for one to be placed in front of Leonardo's one. Two masterpieces were born, such as the Battle of Anghiari by the genius of Vinci and the Battle of Cascina by Buonarroti, works that painters from all over the world drank at the time ( Benvenuto Cellini called them "the school of the world") but which lost and that we know only through copies of Aristotle da Sangallo for the Battle of Cascina and of Pieter Paul Rubens (only the central group of knights) for that of Anghiari. In 1505 Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by Julius II and we know that the relations between the artist and the Pope were very complicated, so much so that Buonarroti took refuge for a period in Florence: "His escape from Rome in April 1506, during the months spent in Florence before being forced to go to Bologna to obtain the pardon of Julius II "(Pierluigi De Vecchi - Elda Cerchiari, Art in time - From the Late Gothic to the Rococò , Gruppo Fabbri, Bompiani, Sonzogno, Etas, Milan, 1991 -ninety two).

Leonardo for his part, after a period in Milan and a short stay in Venice, had returned to Florence in 1500. These were very productive years for the artist who, in addition to carrying out the Battle of Anghiari, paints oil on wood with Sant'Anna, the Madonna and the Child in which the pyramidal group (the Virgin sits on the mother's legs) with Jesus holding a lamb is placed in front of a landscape dominated by the gray color and the typical Leonardo “nuance”. During these years, the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned the portrait of his wife, Mona Lisa Gherardini, from the artist from Vinci. The famous portrait called La Gioconda , which shows a stupendous piece of nuance in the background, is unique because of "the atmospheric winding that makes the union of the figure with the mysterious landscape indissoluble - both in formal and emotional terms" (Pierluigi De Vecchi - Elda Cerchiari, op.cit.). Many stories have been told around the mythical smile (which could be the result of two different superimposed smiles) of the portrayed woman, of which the best known emphasizes how "according to Vasari, even her famous smile is not a spontaneous expression, but the result of a refined technique, already adopted in the field of physiognomy studies: that is, Leonardo would have gathered in the presence of the woman a group of musicians, singers and buffoons' who would make her feel cheerful to remove that melancholy that often gives portrait painting that are done '"(Carlo Vecce, Leonardo , Salerno editrice, Rome, 1998). As always, in addition to art, Leonardo deals with his scientific studies and his most ambitious project is particularly challenging: the deviation of the course of the Arno before the arrival of the river in Florence. In this way the genius of Vinci tries to obtain two results: to give a solution to the frequent overflows of the river that created great problems for the city and to offer it an outlet to the sea that would allow the Florentines to have a navigable trade route. However, Leonardo's ideas were not accepted by the Signoria and the dream of diverting the Arno remains on paper. Meanwhile, the call of Milan became irresistible and in 1506 Leonardo left the Tuscan capital for the second time.