For the great Renaissance masters, the creation of art was not only an ntellectual or aesthetic exercise. It was a contest. The artists of sixteenth-century Italy knew each other's work, knew each other's patrons, nd knew each other - sometimes as friends and colleagues, sometimes s enemies, but always as rivals. This enthralling book views the lives and reatest works of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian through the rism of their ardent rivalry. Rona Goffen, one of the most highly respected scholars of the Italian Renaissance today, brings the artists to life in this lively account of their impassioned strivings to outdo both living competitors and the masters of antiquity. Rivalry was the leitmotif of the Renaissance masters' careers, Goffen shows, and Michelangelo's art was their competitive point of reference. Quoting from poems, letters, treatises, contracts, and other contemporary writings, the author demonstrates the extent to which artists, as well as their patrons and colleagues, characteristically thought about art in the context of rivalry. Renaissance patrons often stipulated in contracts with artists that their commissions be more beautiful than works made for other patrons.
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