Tavola Doria

The Tavola Doria, attributed to Leonardo or his circle, is a copy of his lost Battle of Anghiari, depicting the central cavalry melee from his great Florentine commission that was left unfinished and subsequently destroyed or concealed. The Battle of Anghiari commission — paired with Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina on the opposite wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio in Florence — would have been the supreme demonstration of his and Michelangelo's rivalry and the greatest history painting program of the Renaissance. The Tavola Doria preserves the composition's central group through a near-contemporary copy that documents what was lost when Leonardo abandoned the project.

The dynamic composition of intertwined horses and riders creates a powerful vortex of military violence, with the energetic brushwork and dramatic lighting preserving something of Leonardo's original conception.