17. The Battle of Anghiari was reputedly a masterpiece of Renaissance art until its destruction during renovations
Commissioned in 1504 by Piero Soderini to decorate the Hall of Five Hundred, in the only occasion the legendary pair ever worked together Michelangelo was hired to paint one wall and Leonardo da Vinci the opposite. Whilst Michelangelo elected not to complete his masterpiece depicting an episode from the Battle of Cascina, being invited to Rome to construct the Pope’s tomb a year later, da Vinci inadvertently spoiled his own creation. Designing an ingenious scaffold capable of being raised or folded, da Vinci embarked on an immense dedication of the Battle of Anghiari which would have been his largest work.
Experimenting with a thick undercoat following his poor experiences with oil colors during The Last Supper, da Vinci discovered that subsequently applied paint dripped before drying. Despite his best efforts, da Vinci could only save the lower part of his masterpiece and abandoned the project in a fit of auteur rage. Despite being incomplete, the mural became one of da Vinci’s most acclaimed paintings, celebrated for decades as a passionate work of genius. Sadly, however, during renovations of the room in the mid-to-late sixteenth century, both unfinished works were destroyed, with only copies of da Vinci’s masterpiece remaining to offer a glimpse into his flawed creation.