The Royal Academy of Arts new exhibition focuses on a time in 16th-century Florence when the three giants of the Italian Renaissance - Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael - briefly crossed paths while they were competing for the attention of the city's most powerful patrons.
Photo: royalacademy.org.ukA famous meeting was held on the 25th January 1504 to decide the location of Michelangelo's soon-to-be-completed statue of David, in which Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo and Filippino Lippi all met to discuss the possibilities.
The exhibition explores this rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, and the influence they both had on a young Raphael.
Photo: royalacademy.org.ukItalian Renaissance drawings and paintings
On display will be over 40 works including the only marble sculpture of Michelangelo's in the UK - Taddei Tondo - alongside some of his preparatory drawings and the studies he made for his mural in the council hall of the Palazzo Vecchio.
Photo: royalacademy.org.ukAlso on show will be Leonardo's Burlington House Cartoon, Raphael's Bridgewater Madonna and Esterhazy Madonna, and the drawing that Raphael made of the central scene in Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari.
