If pushed to name three Renaissance artists (or three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael are probably most people’s picks (sorry, Donatello). The three giants of the Renaissance are coming together in a new show at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, which examines their relationships with one another both personally and professionally during their shared lifetimes at the turn of the 16th century.
Leonardo was the eldest of the masters, born in Florence in 1452. He was a month off 23 when Michelangelo was born in Tuscany and 31 by the time Raphael came along in Urbino. There would only be 36 years where all three coincided on this planet, and just 20 years when all three were in adulthood.
Install shot of “Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael” (2024). Photo: © David Parry / Royal Academy of Arts.
Their relationships were laden with competition, as all were vying for commissions by powerful Florentine and Roman patrons. Michelangelo and Leonardo competed for the attention of the powerful Medici family, and after Raphael emerged on the scene he and Michelangelo fought for commissions from Pope Julius II. Michelangelo belittled the achievements of his younger rival after his early death, claiming, “everything he learned he learned from me.”
In “Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael,” the Royal Academy is showcasing some of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance drawing in the world. The exhibition has been organized in partnership with London’s National Gallery and the Royal Collection Trust, whose current exhibition “Drawing the Italian Renaissance” also features work by the three masters.
More than 40 works by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo are on display in London, and we took a deeper look at three works, one by each of the Renaissance rivals, all three unfinished and each a depiction of the Virgin Mary with Jesus and the Infant Saint John the Baptist.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John (The “Taddei Tondo”), c. 1504–05
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John (The “Taddei Tondo”), c. 1504–05. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
The Taddei Tondo—nicknamed after Taddeo Taddei, the wealthy cloth merchant who commissioned it—is the focal point of “Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael,” and the key artwork in the narrative of the exhibition’s accompanying book. The carving shows the infant Saint John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, offering his young relative a bird, designed as a symbol of the Passion of Christ and a foreshadowing of Jesus’ crucifixion. The tondo (a round artwork) is incomplete, likely because of a new commission which saw Michelangelo travel to Rome to create the tomb for Pope Julius II.
In Lives of the Artists, Vasari’s groundbreaking biographical art history (1550), the author mentions how the Taddei Tondo and a second marble tondo intended for patron Bartolomeo Pitti were both “roughed out but left unfinished.” The fact that Taddei’s commission hung in his house (and remained there until the early 19th century) despite being unfinished was testament to the quality of the piece, made by a 31-year-old Michelangelo at the height of his fame.
Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John the Baptist (“The Burlington House Cartoon”), c. 1506–08
Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John the Baptist (“The Burlington House Cartoon”), c. 1506–08. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Held in the collection of London’s National Gallery since 1791, the Burlington House Cartoon is the focus of the central gallery of the show. (Its name refers to the address of the Royal Academy itself, at Burlington House in central London.) Cartoons—full-size drawings created in preparation for paintings of frescos—would typically feature evidence of having been traced over or pin-pricked as part of the process of transferring the design from a sheet of paper to a wall, but the Burlington House Cartoon shows no such marks.
This suggests that the drawing was designed as a final artwork itself, and it highlights the importance of drawing in Renaissance artistic practices. The only evidence of manipulation shown on the drawing is that the cartoon is made up of several smaller sheets of paper glued together, due simply to the fact that sheets this large (about 56 inches high) were not available in the early 16th century. In the drawing, Mary, Jesus, and John are joined by Saint Anne, Mary’s mother. Certain areas are left unfinished, including Saint Anne’s arm, but the faces are completed in great detail using charcoal and chalk, with a softening sfumato technique (derived from the Italian word sfumare, meaning “to tone down” or “evaporate like smoke”), which is mostly closely associated with Leonardo and his followers.
Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (‘The Esterhazy Madonna’), c. 1508
Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (“The Esterhazy Madonna”), c. 1508. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
The Esterhazy Madonna is testimony to an exciting point in Raphael’s life and career. It was begun in 1508, when the young artist was living in Florence, and was completed in Rome after Raphael was asked to travel there by Pope Julius II. The natural landscape is typically Florentine, but ancient Roman ruins have been added into the background. Art historians see this work as a marker of the end of Raphael’s Florentine period, and the beginning of his work in Rome, which was more adventurous when it came to stepping away from 15th-century standards of compositional harmony.
On loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, the painting was previously in the collection of 18th-century Prince Esterházy, who gave the work its nickname. The Esterhazy Madonna is also evidence of the exchange of ideas between Renaissance masters, with the Virgin Mary’s pose taking direct inspiration from a work by Leonardo, itself made after an ancient sculpture.