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.
Separation of Light from Darkness
At the center of the composition, God is shown in "contrapposto" rising into the sky, with arms outstretched separating the light from the darkness. Michelangelo employed in this fresco the challenging ceiling fresco technique of "sotto in su" ("from below, upward"), which makes a figure appear as if it is rising above the viewer by using foreshortening. The contrapposto pose was also used by Michelangelo in the "David". It is reported that Michelangelo painted this fresco in a single "giornata", that is, a single working day of approximately eight hours. During Michelangelo's lifetime, this fresco was considered evidence of the painter's technical prowess at its peak. For instance, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), Michelangelo's student and biographer, wrote in 1550: