ring the disturbances in Florence
which resulted from the return of the Medici, and even the fragments
which in 1575 were still preserved by the Strozzi in Mantua have been
lost.[18]

As for Lionardo's fresco, he succeeded in destroying it himself. He took
it into his head to try to perfect the technique of fresco and he gave
himself up once more to his evil spirit of invention and once more
everything was lost. He tried a glaze of oil which did not hold, and the
painting which he abandoned in 1506 in discouragement by 1550 no longer
existed.

The two cartoons of Lionardo and Michelangelo had time, nevertheless, to
exert a blinding fascination over all Italian painting. They formed the
style and influenced the thought of artists from 1506 on but without
being able to transmit their own grandeur. Lionardo, who had a cavalry
combat to represent, reasoned out coldly, as nearly as we can tell,[19]
all the circumstances of a battle and then reproduced them with his
marvellous lucidity which was perhaps a little too analytic to interpret
the excitement of passion.

Michelangelo, who was given an episode of the war of 1364 against the
Pisans under the leadership of the condottiere John Hawkwood (Giovanni
Acuto) had intentionally turned his back on history and the real subject
and painted naked men bathing, noble in form and free in movement, in
the classic manner.[20]

The two masterpieces contained each of them the germ of a different
danger; in Lionardo's the excess of analysis, in Michelangelo's the
excess of abstraction. This last was the most dangerous of the two but
both were of the intellect and agreed in substituting for the charm of
life and of real and spontaneous movement the formula of types and of
logical action.

[Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY

Painted for Agnolo Doni (between 1501-1505)

National Gallery, London.]

The influence of this work became at once universal and tyrannical.
Benvenuto Cellini says in 1559: "The cartoon of Michelangelo was placed
in the palace of the Medici, that of Lionardo in the Hall of the Pope.
As long as they remained there they were the school of the world."
Raphael copied them many times from October, 1504, until July, 1505. Fra
Bartolommeo was inspired by them and Andrea del Sarto, when he was very
young, spent whole days in studying them. Among the artists who taught
themselves in that school are Perino del Vaga, Rosso, Battista Franco,
Salviati, Vasari, Bronzino, Rido