Battle of The Centaurs (Michelangelo) - Background

Background

Michelangelo, at 17, was working under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici when he crafted the Battle of the Centaurs, although the work was not commissioned but created for himself. The work reflected a then current fashion for reproducing ancient themes. Specifically, Michelangelo was inspired by a relief that had been produced for de' Medici by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a work in bronze that hung in the Medici palace. Michelangelo chose to work in marble rather than the more expensive bronze to keep down costs. Bertoldo's work, The Equestrian Battle in the Ancient Manner—also known as Battle (with Hercules)—was a recreation of a damaged Roman battle sarcophagus and required liberal imagination to fill in the gaps left by the damaged original. Bertoldo took other liberties with his source material and seems to have himself been inspired by the Antonio del Pollaiolo engraving Battle of the Nudes.

The young sculptor never finished the work. While a number of biographies have attributed this to the loss of power of the Medici family, contemporary Michelangelo biographer Eric Scigliano argues that Michelangelo had plenty of time to finish the sculpture if he had chosen to and points out that this was only the first of several "non finito" sculptures, preceding the Taddei Tondo and Pitti Tondo. He also notes that Michelangelo expressed no dissatisfaction with the work.

Whether or not the sculpture was intentionally left incomplete, Michelangelo regarded this sculpture as the best of his early works. He kept it, though he destroyed or abandoned many of his other pieces, and remarked to his biographer Ascanio Condivi later in his life that looking at it made him regret the time he'd spent in pursuits other than sculpture.