CASCINA

The Battle of Cascina is a project that I've been working on and off for since '91. It is a painting that Michelangelo was commissioned to create on a wall of the Medici Palace while Leonardo was to paint another opposite him. Neither work ever got past the cartoon stage yet Michelangelo's was considered by all who saw it to be the finest work he had ever done. When the project was abandoned, overly enthusiastic fans attacked it in a Dionysian frenzy and stole fragments of it away until there was nothing left.

I'm intrigued by the project because I believe that we don't have anything that comes close to suggesting Michelangelo's original composition. I don't pretend that my version is anything approaching the Master's in terms of quality but I do know that I have a better understanding of the compositional principles of Michelangelo that a great many others.

 What we do have remaining are some preliminary sketches from the Master and, perhaps more importantly, sketches done by contemporaries and near contemporaries that I believe may be done after fragments form the lost cartoon or from remembering what they'd seen on that wall.

A website hinting at all the drawings that we have to work from.

de Sangallo's version done, I believe, from a fragment and memory.

A preliminary sketch by Michelangelo suggesting the central composition

  My Original Cartoon done in '91 which I think was more successful than the paintings that followed

   The painting as it stands now. I started painting it sometime around '93 and went back to it 10 years later. Its not working.

  Some quick photo-shopping to explore an idea for changing the background. I'm loathe to put enemy horses in the back because both Michelangelo and I don't like horses as much as we like the Human Figure.

Sketchy guide to linear compositional elements. It also does a virtual horizontal clockwise rotation upon the center.

Going back to it in 2011, the first results are positive.

And now 2012