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.
Léon Davent
An etching of "Michelangelo at the Age of Twenty-Three" (see gallery) is "somewhat, but not altogether, surprising" as a subject in France some forty years after 1498, when Michelangelo was that age. It is identified by the inscription beneath, but is not signed by "L.D.", unlike most of Davent's prints. It is certainly not "an actual likeness, since the figure is not in the least individualized". Henri Zerner suggests "most tentatively" that 1498 was the date the sculptor signed the contract for his "Pietà", now in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City with the French ambassador in Rome, Cardinal Jean de Bilhères, who commissioned the work. A French audience might therefore regard this point in his life as especially significant.