The Royal Academy's new exhibition spotlights the fierce rivalry and mutual influence between Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and a young Raphael in Florence around 1504.
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00:00For a few years, they go head to head, you know, the two titans of the Italian Renaissance.
00:25And they're very jealous of each other.
00:26They don't particularly like each other.
00:28They are very different in personality and character, I think, and in approach.
00:34But those are the years when Michelangelo makes his David, Leonardo starts painting
00:39the Mona Lisa.
00:40So it's a very exciting moment of what we now think of as sort of the beginnings of
00:45the high Renaissance.
01:14It was Michelangelo who was almost like a film director trying to get bodies to move
01:21and be energetic and show energy and tension, almost like Tarantino or Hitchcock if he was
01:27alive today.
01:29And then on the other side, trying to do something different, Leonardo da Vinci is realising
01:35that emotion doesn't have to just come through strength, but could come through emotion.
01:40So he was almost like Mario Testino or Annie Leibovitz.