Looking for a Fight: The Received Story

Abstract

The received account of Leonardo da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari, told straight before the series tests it: the 1503 commission for the Sala del Gran Consiglio, the rivalry with Michelangelo's never-painted Battle of Cascina, the experimental technique that is said to have failed on the wall, the abandonment, and the disappearance of the unfinished mural beneath Vasari's renovation. None of it is the series' argument. It is the version found in textbooks, museum captions, and documentaries, stated as fairly as the writer can manage, because the reader is owed the inherited story straight before being asked to reexamine it.