Renaissance Rivals - Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael: the tumultuous trio

Competition was central to the Italian Renaissance. Artists competed with orators and humanists for positions at court or with each other for work. In Milan, Leonardo had to compete with other courtiers for the attention of the Duke, Ludovico “il Moro” Sforza, who commissioned him to paint The Last Supper and to make a giant equestrian statue of his father Francesco. The latter was never finished as in 1499 the Sforza regime fell and Leonardo returned to his homeland of Florence.

Here he ran into direct (and acrimonious) competition with another artist, his younger rival, the sculptor Michelangelo. They were both engaged in providing painted battle-scenes for the council room of the town hall for the republican regime that had replaced Medici control. Neither artist finished their task but a younger painter from Urbino, Raphael, arrived in town in 1505 just in time to learn from their heroic achievements and failures.

Raphael of course then took his own renewed style to Rome and here he, in his turn, entered into competition with the great Michelangelo under the patronage of Pope Julius II. As Raphael painted the Stanza della Segnatura, the Sistine Chapel ceiling was frescoed by Michelangelo. Raphael paid tribute to Michelangelo by including him in the School of Athens but his hero resented the younger rival’s success, claiming that “everything he learned he learned from me”. When Michelangelo was sent back to Florence by Pope Leo X to work on projects for the re-instated Medici, Raphael became the dominant figure in Rome until his premature death in 1520. Meanwhile the aged Leonardo had died in France in the service of Francis I.

This was not the full picture, however: in the years 1495–1520 these three artists between them had created the “High Renaissance”, their rivalry providing the impetus in the creation of this great pinnacle of European visual culture, setting aesthetic standards for centuries to come. Michelangelo continued to be active in both Florence and then Rome until his death in 1564.