The Ideal imagines "the greatest battle in the history of art"

Barcelona"It's the biggest battle in the history of art!" exclaims Jordi Sellas with his usual enthusiasm. The director of Ideal, Barcelona's Digital Arts Center, is here for business. He wants journalists to immediately immerse themselves in the immersive experience. Leonardo versus Michelangelo, which opens this Wednesday and will be open until Easter (tickets are €9.50, €14.50, and €18.50). "It's a real confrontation that took place 500 years ago in Florence, an artistic duel that remained unfinished," says Sellas, looking at two images of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), reminiscent of two soap opera heroes.

It is the portico of a visit that begins with a historical context room, which continues through the virtual reality room to experience Florence in 1500 and through an immersive room that stages the artistic rivalry between the two artists, and which after an area dedicated to the cultural impact of Leonardo and Michelangelo in a workspace in a biographical corridor both and in what, by switch screens, the visitor must vote which work he or she likes the most. "We are team Leonardo or team Miquel Àngel," says Sellas, defender of they make fiction, of play and competitiveness as tools for the dissemination of art. "We can talk about Renaissance art appropriately but have a good time," he says. And fostering a rivalry like that of "Messi and Ronaldo or Magic Johnson and Larry Bird," he adds, inserting art into a dynamic of sporting rivalry. In fact, the entire experience Leonardo versus Michelangelo It's designed to force a choice, as if a non-competitive relationship between two geniuses were intolerable. "Art lovers, support your favorite!" the avatars of Leonardo and Michelangelo demand simultaneously at one point during the visit.

The rivalry at the Palazzo Vecchio

The origin of Leonardo versus Michelangelo It has to do with what happened between 1503 and 1505 in the Republic of Florence that was born after the expulsion of the Medici in 1498: a commission as ambitious as it was reckless to paint the mural decoration of the Hall of the Five Hundred, in the Palazzo Vecchio. Piero Soderini, the city's gonfanoner, surely advised by Machiavelli, commissioned the work to Leonardo and Michelangelo. Da Vinci had to paint the Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo, the Battle of Cascina, two Florentine victories against the Republic of Pisa in the 14th century. The idea was daring, because the two geniuses had already had some clashes. And they had more: for example, when in January 1504 Da Vinci, who was part of the commission that was to decide the location of the David by Miquel Àngel, considered that the sculpture should not have such a prominent space in front of the Palazzo Vecchio as it finally had, as Carlo Vecce records, in Life of Leonardo.

According to Sellas, Leonardo was a genius who had a reputation "for not finishing his works", so, to spur him on, "Machiavelli commissioned the other wall to Miquel Àngel". However, it is more likely that the Republic of Florence, to reinforce its legitimacy, wanted to exalt Florentine glories by hiring two of the most prized artists of the time. In any case, things did not go well.

Leonardo, who in the previous years had already painted a good part of his masterpieces and was then working on the Gioconda, he did indeed leave the work unfinished, probably due to technical problems in the application or drying of the paint, and it disappeared (or was covered up) when Vasari remodeled the palace in 1563. Preparatory cartoons also circulated for a time, and to understand the magnitude of the work, a copy survives.

Michelangelo, who at the beginning of the 16th century stood out above all as a sculptor (he had already done Pity), although he had painted The Burial of Christ and worked in Tondo Doni, he left the Florentine commission when Pope Julius II called him to Rome, where in the following years he would create such sculptural masterpieces (Moses) as pictorial (the Final Judgment From the Sistine Chapel). Of the Battle of Cascina according to Miquel Àngel, only a copy made by Bastiano da Sangallo from one of the cartoons has survived.

"It's an unfinished battle, and in this experience it's the visitor who must choose the winner. The visitor acts as judge," says Sellas. "We've come to play!" he warns. The game has the usual quality of the projects developed by the Catalan studio Layers of Reality at the Ideal, and is expected to attract around 150,000 visitors. The proposal is interesting and a way to attract an audience to the Renaissance, but not recommended for those who prefer a more contemplative enjoyment of art. In the immersive part, for example, the soundtrack, the music, the camera movements and the animations of the works (figures of the Final Judgment that move, the Gioconda that winks...) overstimulate the artistic experience and contradict what Leonardo and Miquel Àngel themselves explain (in Italian with Catalan and Spanish subtitles) at one point during the visit, when they talk about the spiritual and intimate transcendence of art. It is also true that seeing the Gioconda in the Louvre or the David In Florence, surrounded by people and mobile phones does not facilitate a transcendent or intimate experience.