Michelangelo
With the completion of the "David" came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned to paint "The Battle of Anghiara" in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, depicting the battle between Florence and Milan in 1440. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the "Battle of Cascina". The two paintings are very different: Leonardo depicts soldiers fighting on horseback, while Michelangelo has soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost forever when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired, and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.
Madonna of the Stairs
The Madonna of the Stairs (or Madonna of the Steps) is a relief sculpture by Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. It was sculpted around 1491, when Michelangelo was about seventeen. This and the "Battle of the Centaurs" were Michelangelo's first two sculptures. The first reference to the "Madonna of the Stairs" as a work by Michelangelo was in the 1568 edition of Giorgio Vasari's "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects".