About the Book:

At the turn of the 16th century, three titans of the Italian Renaissance briefly crossed paths, competing for the attention of the most powerful patrons in Republican Florence. In January 1504 the city’s most prominent artists came together to advise on an appropriate location for Michelangelo’s nearly finished sculpture of David. Among them was Leonardo da Vinci, who – like Michelangelo – had only recently returned to his native Florence.

In this beautifully designed book, Scott Nethersole and Per Rumberg take Michelangelo’s celebrated Taddei Tondo as their starting point, and examine the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, and the influence of both on the young Raphael. Some of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance drawing are reproduced, including Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon and studies by Leonardo and Michelangelo for their murals commissioned by the Florentine government for the newly constructed council hall in the Palazzo della Signoria.

About the Author:

Scott Nethersole is Professor of the History of Art and Architecture from 500-1500 at Radboud University. His research focusses on the art and visual world of the fifteenth century, both in late medieval and early Renaissance Italy and in pre-colonial Africa, where he is particularly interested in the visual traces of first contact between Africans and Europeans.

Per Rumberg is Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. He previously worked at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, and the National Gallery, London, where he was one of the curators of the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. He studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and Humboldt University, Berlin, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence. His expertise and interests range from the Italian Renaissance to the twenty-first century.