The Battle of Anghiari

Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari, begun in 1503 for the Palazzo Vecchio's Sala del Gran Consiglio in Florence, depicted the Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari in 1440 in what would have been the most ambitious battle painting in the history of art. Leonardo prepared obsessively — studying horses, corpses, and battle accounts — before beginning the work in a new experimental technique that failed catastrophically, the paint running before it could dry. The unfinished and subsequently lost work became Leonardo's most famous failure, known today only through copies and drawings that document the central cavalry melee. Vasari reported that he had seen traces of the work beneath later repainting, a claim that has motivated extensive modern investigation.

Known from copies, the composition's swirling vortex of interlocked horses and riders demonstrates Leonardo's unprecedented approach to depicting violent action, with furious energy contained within a tightly compressed pictorial space.