The News
A single year in the shared lives of three giants — and rivals — of Renaissance art is the focus of a major exhibition at London’s Royal Academy. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 examines how the artists inspired and competed against one another as they vied for commissions from wealthy Florentine patrons. Their fierce rivalry would fuel the creation of masterpieces that defined the High Renaissance, impacting European art for centuries after.
“Everything he learned, he learned from me,” Michelangelo claimed after his younger rival Raphael died at 37. The drawings, paintings, and sculptures on display are “lit like holy relics,” wrote the Times of London, calling the exhibition “the nearest thing to a miraculous artistic resurrection.”