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''Battle of the Centaurs'' is a relief by Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo, created around 1492. It was the last work Michelangelo created while under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, who died shortly after its completion. Inspired by a classical relief created by Bertoldo di Giovanni, the unfinished marble sculpture depicts the mythic battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. A popular subject of art in ancient Greece, the story was suggested to Michelangelo by the classical scholar and poet Poliziano. ''Battle of the Centaurs'' was a remarkable sculpture in several ways, presaging Michelangelo's future sculptural direction. Michelangelo had departed from the then current practices of working on a discrete plane to work multidimensionally. It was also the first sculpture Michelangelo created without the use of a bow drill and the first sculpture to reach such a state of completion with the marks of the subbia chisel left to stand as a final surface. Whether intentionally left unfinished or not, the work is significant in the tradition of "non finito" sculpting technique for that reason. Michelangelo regarded it as the best of his early works, and a visual reminder of why he should have focused his efforts on sculpture. ==Background== Michelangelo, at 17, was working under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici when he crafted the ''Battle of the Centaurs'', although the work was not commissioned but created for himself. The work reflected a then current fashion for reproducing ancient themes. Specifically, Michelangelo was inspired by a relief that had been produced for de' Medici by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a work in bronze that hung in the Medici palace.〔 Michelangelo chose to work in marble rather than the more expensive bronze to keep down costs.〔 Bertoldo's work, The ''Equestrian Battle in the Ancient Manner''—also known as ''Battle (with Hercules)''—was a recreation of a damaged Roman battle sarcophagus and required liberal imagination to fill in the gaps left by the damaged original. Bertoldo took other liberties with his source material and seems to have himself been inspired by the Antonio del Pollaiolo engraving ''Battle of the Nudes''.〔 The young sculptor never finished the work. While a number of biographies have attributed this to the loss of power of the Medici family, contemporary Michelangelo biographer Eric Scigliano argues that Michelangelo had plenty of time to finish the sculpture if he had chosen to and points out that this was only the first of several "non finito" sculptures, preceding the ''Taddei Tondo'' and ''Pitti Tondo''. He also notes that Michelangelo expressed no dissatisfaction with the work. Whether or not the sculpture was intentionally left incomplete, Michelangelo regarded this sculpture as the best of his early works.〔 He kept it, though he destroyed or abandoned many of his other pieces, and remarked to his biographer Ascanio Condivi later in his life that looking at it made him regret the time he'd spent in pursuits other than sculpture.〔Scigliano (2005), 44.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of the Centaurs (Michelangelo)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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