The aforementioned Godart stressed the possible political message of the work: "Leonardo", stressed the scholar, "knew he had to create a work with a strong political impact. The aim was to show through the representation of the Battle of Anghiari the triumph of a thoughtful Florence, strong in its rights and institutions, over an army of brutal and ruthless mercenaries. Well [...], the master has succeeded perfectly in his intent".
An intent reached on the one hand with a message linked to the history of Florence: the enemies of the Republic who are depicted as evil, violent and horrifying men, and the Florentine leaders who embody the wisdom, intelligence, strategy, as well as the triumph of the institutions of Florence. On the other hand, Godart writes, "an implacable denunciation of war".
- It is well known that Leonardo da Vinci, ahead of his time, had a very bad opinion on the war: in his Treatise on Painting, the artist, in suggesting how to compose the glimpses of the human figure in the battle scenes, wrote that "in the stories you do in all ways that happen to you, and maximum in battles, where out of necessity happen endless glimpses and bending of 'composers of such discord, or you mean madness".
And again, from the Corpus of anatomical studies: "think that the tower of life to the homosexual is a very nefarious thing [...], and do not want your anger or malice to destroy so much life, that truly those who esteem novella deserve". Leonardo, who tended to be a pacifist, therefore considered war to be a "bestial madness", a contention more proper to animals than to men, which does not befit rational beings, and in the same way he deeply despised those who take the life of someone else: However, the painter considered war a necessary evil if what was at stake was the loss of freedom (in the manuscript Ashburnham is contained a fragment of a proem for a treatise on military art that was never made, and in which Leonardo writes that "to maintain the main gift of nature, that is freedom, I find a way to offend and defend from being besieged by the ambitious tyrants": hence, his activity as a military engineer).
With his Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo wanted to express his condemnation of the war, especially through the eyes of the two horses: "if the noble silhouettes of the houses contrast with the bestiality of the two leaders in the service of the Visconti and the two infantrymen who face each other in a deadly duel," Godart reiterated, "it is above all the frightened eyes of the two animals that condemn the horror of the fray in which they were involved [...]. The eyes of Leonardo's horses that contemplates with disgust the clash with the last blood that sees them involved are the most effective of the condemnations of any form of war".
As mentioned, we do not have complete drawings by Leonardo, but six studies are kept: at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice there are three drawings in which Leonardo studies the position of the knights and the composition of the mix (and the drawings result in particularly crowded and violent scenes: in particular, in the Three Groups of Men in Fight we see how much Leonardo concentrated on the brawl of the two men on the ground, unarmed, with the one at the top trying to pierce the eyes of the opponent with his bare hands), at the Royal Library of Windsor there is instead a black chalk drawing depicting some knights with banners, In the Uffizi there are some studies for the two knights on the right, while the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest preserves a drawing for the study of a knight's head, and especially the most famous autograph study of the painter from Vinci for the Battle of Anghiari, or the study for the head of Niccolò Piccinino.
The studios in Budapest are particularly important: a great expert on Leonardo da Vinci's art, Carmen Bambach, believes that they were among the last to be made for the heads before moving on to the final editing of the painting, and thinks that the studios were conducted live.
The artist, the expert points out, referring to the drawing of the head in Budapest (which could be identified as a sketch for the figure of Pietro Giampaolo Orsini), "first drew the contours of the head, in a coarse manner, then modelled the shadows with parallel lines, with his characteristic way of drawing from the lower right corner to the upper left. Then he rubbed the strokes to obtain an effect of continuity, and to reinforce the contours he stepped quite strongly with the chalk on the paper". From the drawings and copies (which all focus on the clash between the four commanders) it is however evident that this scuffle was the central motif of Leonardo's painting. "The copies that have come down to us", wrote Frank Zöllner, "confirm the supposition that the artist did not make any composition on either the preparatory cardboard of the wall painting or the wall painting itself that essentially went beyond the battle for the standard". It is also true, however, that the copies differ in different details, sometimes reported differently, sometimes hidden.
To be continued.