The Battle of Anghiari (Leonardo da Vinci)
In 1504 Leonardo da Vinci was given the commission by gonfaloniere Piero Soderini, a contract signed by Niccolò Machiavelli, to decorate the Hall of Five Hundred. At the same time his rival Michelangelo, who had just finished his "David", was designated the opposite wall. This was the only time that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo worked together on the same project. The painting of Michelangelo depicted an episode from the Battle of Cascina, when a group of bathing soldiers was surprised by the enemy. However Michelangelo did not stay in Florence long enough to complete the project. He was able to finish his cartoon, but only began the painting. He was invited back to Rome in 1505 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb.
The Deposition (Michelangelo)
One night in 1555, Michelangelo attacked the group in a moment of frustration in an attempt to completely destroy it. He broke off numerous limbs from the figure. Vasari noted that Michelangelo had complained about a vein in the marble causing problems for him continuously while carving. Another factor that intensified Michelangelo's frustration was that his servant Urbino had been bothering him to finish it. Despite all of these factors, they still are not big enough for Michelangelo to just throw away eight years of work from a momentary lapse of reason. Ambiguities and unexplained aspects on Michelangelo's part are at the center of interpretation of this work. Art historians have found possible answers that explain on a deeper level the dissatisfaction he had with the sculpture. They theorize that Michelangelo could have had significant problems with both the growing sexual motif of a slung leg over another's lap, and with the persecution of the Nicodemists.