The Lost Leonardo: The Battle of Anghiari (1505)

The Battle of Anghiari (1505) is a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), sometimes referred to as "The Lost Leonardo". Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Some believe the painting is hidden beneath one of the later frescoes in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

The central scene depicts 4 men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440.

The following is Peter Paul Rubens's (1577 – 1640 - a Flemish Baroque painter) drawing of the central section of The Battle of Anghiari, located in the Louvre, Paris. It dates from 1603 and known as The Battle of the Standard, and was based on an engraving of 1553 by Lorenzo Zacchia, which was taken from the painting itself or possibly derived from a cartoon by Leonardo.