At the turn of the 16th century, Florence was the scene for “what may have been the ultimate clash of the titans of Western art”, said Robert Fox in The London Standard.
In about 1504, the “ageing” Leonardo da Vinci, the rising star Michelangelo and the upstart newcomer Raphael all crossed paths in the Tuscan city, “a hotbed of intrigue and turmoil” then home to Machiavelli and the Medicis. The three masters copied, studied and almost certainly drew influence from each other, and – less collegially – competed for patrons. This small, three-room exhibition at the Royal Academy explores the great meeting of minds that took place in Florence that year, bringing together one major, contemporaneous work from each artist: Leonardo’s so-called “Burlington House Cartoon”, depicting the Virgin and Child alongside Saint Anne and John the Baptist; the Michelangelo sculptural relief known as the Taddei Tondo; and Raphael’s “Esterházy Madonna”. These masterpieces are bolstered by a series of sketches and copies dating from the period, and the result is “a gem of a show”.
The exhibition boasts “plenty of standout moments”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. One such moment occurs early on, when we encounter both Michelangelo’s “Tondo” and a delicate pen-and-ink study of the Virgin and Child by Raphael. The former, depicting “a curly-haired, chubby Christ Child squirming upon his mother’s lap”, clearly made an impression on the younger artist, whose own drawing here copies several motifs from that sculpture, as if Raphael had been watching over Michelangelo’s shoulder as he worked. Almost as interesting are copies of “the greatest pair of artworks that never existed”: two “vast murals” of battle scenes by Leonardo and Michelangelo, intended to decorate a chamber in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, but never executed. The “experimental” sheets here “reveal how intricately both artists planned their compositions”.
“This is an academic show,” said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. “It makes little attempt to bring ‘Florence circa 1504’ to life.” We see nothing about the ferment of the times: Savonarola’s revolution and execution; Machiavelli; the Medici; the public arguments between Michelangelo and Leonardo. This exhibition “should have been a mighty epic”. It isn’t. Nevertheless, it is animated by “the blast” of Leonardo’s scenes of the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. Just before he created them, “Leonardo served as military engineer to Cesare Borgia, psychopathic son of Pope Alexander VI”. His drawings give a flavour of what he must have witnessed: rearing horses, screaming faces, “an old warrior howling from his leathery cruel face as he prepares to chop off an enemy’s hand”. You “will never forget Leonardo’s vision of war”.