““Leonardo was renowned as a painter, and Michelangelo (thanks to his Battle of the Centaurs and the David) was known for portraying male warriors. It took them over a year just to prepare their concepts and designs. Each fresco was to be more than 1,400 square feet. In 1504 gigantic sheets of paper (a very expensive commodity in the sixteenth century) were bought and prepared for the full-sized cartoni, or “cartoons,” the charcoal drawings used for transferring the outlines of the figures onto the fresh plaster of the fresco. Both artists got carried away by their special interests: Leonardo concentrated on the anatomy of the horses in the battle, while Michelangelo—as you might have guessed—filled his scene with muscular male nudes in every possible position. Copy by Aristotile da Sangallo of a detail from Michelangelo’s cartoon for the Battle of Cascina, c.””
