MICHELANGELO AND LEONARDO

Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were the best of friends. No, actually, Leonardo hated Michelangelo. And it looked like Michelangelo hated Leonardo back. So it would be safe to say that they both hated each other. In the beginning they sort of tolerated one another, meeting at the Vatican cocktail parties, but when Michelangelo was awarded the Artist of the Year award and Leonardo got a blue ribbon with the inscription ‘Also Ran’, things started to turn nasty. And it didn’t help that in his acceptance speech Michelangelo mentioned “all those no-talent runners-up.” Giorgio Vasari in his best-selling book How Leonardo and Michelangelo Really Hated Each Other recorded a lot of endearing little pranks two great artists played upon one another. For instance, in order to annoy Mick, Leo used to write from right to left. Mick avenged himself by writing with a felt pen on the buttocks of Leo’s lover: “Reserved for Leonardo. No parking at any time.” They would go to incredible lengths to inconvenience each other. When Leo was working in Venice, Mick flooded the whole city. Leo got his feet wet and went down with a cold. When he got better, Leo beat up Mick’s dad. Everyone knew how fond the great artist was of his Papa. Michelangelo caught up with Leonardo in the town of Pisa in Tuscany, which at the time prided itself on having the straightest tower in the whole Italy. Until Mick threw Leonardo at it, that is. Leonardo called the cops, but they had been bribed by Mick, and they did not care about Leo’s kind anyway. Adding insult to battery, Michelangelo sneaked into the Louvre and drew a moustache on Mona Lisa. Undeterred, Leo took a slingshot and broke off half of David’s private part. And it’s very unfortunate that he did that, as his mischief prompted millions of schoolgirls ever since to bug their art teachers with the same question: “How come David has such a small willy?” In my art teaching days I used to wonder if there was anything else in the history of freaking art that female art students cared for! They never asked me what the hell Mona Lisa was grinning about, or why Andy Warhol was such an asshole. All they wanted to know was… But I digress.


Michelangelo at the time was painting a fresco The Whore of Babylon Having a Bath for a bathhouse in Florence, and he didn’t think twice before endowing the reprehensible lady with da Vinci’s features. That pushed Leonardo to the brink. He went to the Pope and accused Michelangelo of formalism. The Pope could not stand formalism, so he ordered the Union of Florentine Artists to expel Michelangelo. So the poor genius ended his days on Earth painting murals in supermarkets and restaurants for a bowl of soup. Leonardo, on the contrary, became world famous, invented the hula-hoop, and became the Pope Leo X. If someone ever tells you that life is fair, you better tell them this story.