designs. Michael Angelo had a workshop given him in the Hospital
of the Dyers at San Onofrio, under the date October 31, 1504; a minute of
expenditure shows that paper for the cartoon was provided. Leonardo's
design was the famous "Fight for the Standard." Michael Angelo chose an
episode from the war with Pisa, when, on July 28, 1364, a band of four
hundred Florentines were surprised bathing in the Arno by Sir John
Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto) and his cavalry, then in the service of the
Pisans, a subject that enabled Michael Angelo to express his delight in
the beauty of the human form, and his power of drawing and foreshortening
the naked limbs of the bathers as they hurry out of the river and don
their armour at the sound of the alarm. This great central work of Michael
Angelo's prime has disappeared, and we must be very careful in studying it
to allow for the weakness of the work of the copyists and engravers who
preserved what little record of it is left for us, especially in the
drawing of the nude. If we compare the vault of the Sistine Chapel with
the contemporary engravings we shall be able to estimate the enormous
difference between the cartoon, which may have been the greatest work of
art produced in Italy, and the copies of it that exist. The most complete
copy of the cartoon is the monochrome painting belonging to the Earl of
Leicester, at Holkham Hall. There is a sketch of the whole composition in
the Albertina Gallery at Vienna, and the line engraving by Marc Antonio
Raimondi of three principal figures with a foolish Italian rendering of a
German engraved landscape in the background, utterly destroying what
little Michael Angelesque dignity the engraver was able to get into the
figures, with his poor knowledge of the nude. The best remnants we have
are some few of Michael Angelo's own studies from the nude, done
especially for this composition; they are full of the power, vigour, and
naturalism peculiar to this period, rude forms hacked out of the paper
with a broad pen, altered with charcoal, chalk, white paint, or anything
handy and effective; from them we must try and imagine the power, breadth
and dignity of the great composition. The work was done upon ordinary
paper, stretched over canvas or linen fixed on a wooden frame, like the
few cartoons by the great masters that have come down to us. The outlines
were usually pricked, and when finished the cartoon was cut into
convenient sizes for pouncing on the wa