Looking for a Fight: Patrons in the Know

Abstract

Painting the most important ceremonial room in the Vatican in oil was not a painter's private decision. Someone approved it, and someone paid for it. This installment follows the money and the men: the Medici court that had retaken Florence and with it Leonardo's unfinished battle scene, the bills for resin, oil, and nails that could not have slipped past unnoticed, and the patrons who repeated Leonardo's technique rather than avoiding it. Their approval is treated as testimony: the silent, paying witnesses who knew the painting's fate best acted as if the technique had a history of success.