The Battle of the Centaurs: Sculpted by a 16-year-old Michelangelo, showing the most hardcore wedding brawl in history

What’s the worst wedding you’ve ever been to? Even the tackiest reality show wouldn’t depict the nuptials descending into burning hair, chandeliers smashing faces, or spears impaling throats causing blood to pour out into wine glasses.

But that’s what went down at the Ancient Greek wedding party Michelangelo chose to bring to life in his “Battle of the Centaurs.” As for why…well, that’s a long story. If you don’t like this whole “reading” thing and aren’t interested in drunken men with the bodies of horses getting their brains splattered by giant mixing bowls, you still have time to turn back.

Guild Wars

Michelangelo was adopted. Well, not really. But kind of.

Kids back then typically picked a career early on — it was expected that you’d head off to work as an apprentice under a master. So if you were going to become a butcher or a silkweaver or a cobbler, you’d start your training quite young.

By “cobbler,” I obviously mean someone who fixes shoes. Not someone who makes pies. Although if there’s any piemakers out there who want to sponsor me and pay in pies, get in touch.

A son would often follow in his father’s footsteps. For Michelangelo, this wouldn’t be the case. His father was a minor government official, and placed his children in the Wool and Silk Guilds. The artist/biographer Giorgio Vasari tells us the young Michelangelo wasn’t interested in anything but drawing.

“…he spent all the time he could drawing in secret, for which he was scolded and sometimes beaten by his father and his elders, since they probably thought applying oneself to a craft they did not recognize was a base and unworthy undertaking for their ancient house.”

Now, we can’t entirely trust everything Vasari says. He knew Michelangelo personally, and let’s just say his accounts are a little flattering.

If we can call claiming that God sent Michelangelo as a creator of artistic perfection as being a “little flattering.”

At any rate, Michelangelo ends up as an apprentice in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio, a well-known artist in Florence. He would’ve worked learning how to mix pigments and studying the art of painting frescos.

He wasn’t there long.

The Uncanny Magnifico

Lorenzo de Medici came calling. Now, if you haven’t heard of Lorenzo, he was one of the most important dudes in all of the Renaissance. He was also probably the richest man in the entire world at the time. Oh, and he wore a really cool hat.

Lorenzo was a banker, and basically the ruler of Florence. He was also well-educated, and highly devoted to the arts. All of which earned him the nickname “Il Magnifico.”

We need to keep in mind what the Renaissance actually was: A rediscovery of the art and knowledge of the ancient world. If it came from Greece or Rome, the Important Renaissance Dudes were into it. If there was a way to crush up bits of ancient statues and snort them like cocaine, they would’ve done it.

So Lorenzo got these Important Renaissance Dudes to come and live at his house, like it was some sort of hippie commune. But instead of dropping acid, they’d talk about sculpture and chat about poetry.

I mean, they might have dropped acid. Or whatever the equivalent was in the late 1400’s. I have no way of knowing for sure. I wonder if you could hallucinate if you inhaled bits of a statue of Hadrian? 

Lorenzo wanted to recreate the knowledge of Ancient Athens, and surrounded himself with those who could make that possible. When he wasn’t discussing poetry over lavish meals, he was paying artists to paint and sculpt and do all sorts of artistic things.

Part of his plans involved creating a school for sculptors. He recruited a man named Bertoldo, a student of the great sculptor Donatello. Bertoldo was old and run down, barely able to hold a chisel, but he could certainly teach.

And so it was that Lorenzo brought over some of Ghirlandaio’s students, including Michelangelo. I guess Lorenzo was kind of like Professor X, building his team of X-Men.

Given his legendary temper, it’s pretty obvious which one Michelangelo was: Wolverine. Now I’m picturing him in his yellow spandex, using his claws to carve a masterpiece.

The Translating Tutor

One of the Important Renaissance Dudes Lorenzo kept around was a man named Poliziano. That wasn’t his real name, it was his nickname, which he got because…you know what? It’s not important. And the truth is way more boring than whatever story you’re coming up with in your head right now.

Poliziano was a poet and a translator and an all-around Important Renaissance Dude. Like I said before, the Renaissance was all about rediscovering the ancient world. Guys like Poliziano would translate ancient writing, and try to figure out what it all meant.

Being an Important Renaissance Dude, Poliziano was also a teacher. Not just in schools, but in the home of Lorenzo de Medici, where he lived for a time and tutored the kids in Lorenzo’s house.

Two of those kids became Popes, so you can see how important their education must have been. If a Pope was one of the X-Men, what would his powers be?

Michelangelo didn’t just learn how to sculpt at Lorenzo’s house, he moved in. See? I told you he was kind of adopted. According to Vasari, Lorenzo liked Michelangelo and appreciated his talent so much, he asked Michelangelo’s dad if he could live in his palace:

“…Lorenzo prepared a room for Michelangelo in his home and had him cared for, so that he always sat at the table with his sons and other worthy and noble people who stayed with Lorenzo and by home he was treated with honor.”

As for Poliziano’s name, it was short for “Montepulciano,” the town where he was from. See? Told you it was boring.

Pepperoni Praise

Most of the art from the Renaissance was commissioned. I mean, you could probably make an argument that most art in general was commissioned. Ancient Greek sculptors were given assignments and were paid. Medieval painters were told what to paint, and were paid. Whoever designed Tony the Tiger on the boxes of Frosted Flakes was paid.

I hope so, anyway.

So whether we’re talking about the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or that stupid Geico lizard, it’s all been assigned and paid for. Sometimes the artist gets a degree of latitude, sometimes not.

For the “Battle of the Centaurs” piece, the assignment was…nothing. It was just whatever Michelangelo wanted to make.

And this, at least to me, is part of what Lorenzo de Medici’s home and school represented: A place where people could mine the ancient past, and use the minerals to build the future.

As I said, Poliziano didn’t live at Lorenzo’s house anymore, but he certainly hung out there. I mean, he knew the family really well, and if Lorenzo invites you over, why would you turn down a dinner with the richest man in the world?

I bet they ate some really awesome pizza.

Here’s an account by another of Michelangelo’s biographers – a man whose accounts are also a bit suspicious, because they were friends – Ascanio Condivi, speaking of Poliziano:

“Recognizing in Michelangelo a superior spirit, he loved him very much and, although there was no need, he continually urged him on with his studies, always explaining things to him and providing him with subjects.”

And so, according to Vasari, Lorenzo gave Michelangelo a piece of marble. Poliziano suggested a certain subject from Greek Mythology, when man went to war with Centaurs.

I suppose this makes Poliziano Professor X. Wait, we already have one of those. Clearly, I didn’t think this through.

So, here we have Michelangelo doing whatever he wanted. He wasn’t hired or instructed — he picked a subject after a suggestion, and went to work.

Based on an account by Condivi and since we know Michelangelo kept the piece throughout his life, I think it’s safe to say he was proud of it.

The Red Wedding

Greek Mythology is full of tales we’d consider to be “weird.”

Zeus transforming into a swan to impregnate a woman. Zeus transforming into a bull to impregnate a woman. Zeus transforming into rain to impregnate a woman.

Are you sensing a theme here?

Ancient mythology often consists of contradictory tales, and so it goes with the origin of the Centaurs — creatures that are half man, half horse. The horse was always the bottom half, because even the Ancient Greeks knew that was way cooler than having things the other way around.

So there’s a number of stories about where the Centaurs came from, and I’m not sure any of them are really relevant. But yes, at least one of them involves some creepy sex stuff. I’m not typing it out here, but rest assured there is some excessive gore on the way. At least here in the US, violence is way more acceptable.

The scene Michelangelo depicted is called the Battle of the Centaurs, also known as the “Centauromachy.” Which may be one of the most badass words around, and I wish I could figure out a way to work it into everyday conversation without sounding pretentious.

“Man, that game last night was nuts! It just totally descended into a Centauromachy!”

“Oh hey, look at the time! I have to go return some videotapes.” 

So there’s this legendary group of Ancient Greeks called the Lapiths, sometimes said to be cousins of the centaurs. No, they didn’t have horse heads. They were just normal people.

The Lapiths and the Centaurs lived in conflict, then an uneasy peace. As usual, there’s a variety of stories, but for our sake we’ll try to stick to what we know from Ovid, the Roman poet.

In an attempt to bury the hatchet, the Lapiths invite the Centaurs to a party. A guy named Pirithous is getting married to a woman named Hippodamia. Here’s Ovid, speaking through a narrator character in his book “Metamorphoses”:

“The festive palace echoed with the noisy crowd. See, they were singing the marriage song, and the great hall smoked with fires, and in came the virgin surrounded by a throng of young wives and mothers, conspicuous in her beauty.”

Of course, this being a wedding, there’s plenty of wine — and the Centaurs aren’t used to it. They get drunk almost immediately, and things turn violent.

No, this wasn’t a fight between women over catching the bouquet, and it certainly wasn’t a brawl kicked off because a Lapith kept bumping into a Centaur in the middle of the chicken dance. And the throwdown didn’t just involve some expensive cake being tossed around.

One Centaur grabbed the bride by the hair, and started dragging her away. The other Centaurs joined in, just grabbing people at random. What did they plan on doing with them? Well, this is Ancient Greek mythology, so use your imagination. 

Ovid’s explanation of what started the fight is quite brief — especially compared to the pages and pages where he named individual Lapiths and Centaurs, giving explicit descriptions of the clash. You probably don’t want me to quote any of that, it’s overflowing with carnage.

Oh, you do? I figured. Here’s just a few brief bits:

“He fell backwards, drumming his feet on the blood-soaked earth, gouts of blood spurting from mouth and wound equally, along with brain-matter and wine.”

“The broad dome of his head was shattered, and the soft brain matter oozed out through the hollow nostrils, eyes and years, like curdled milk through the oak lattice, or as liquid trickles through a coarse sieve, under the weight, and squeezes thickly through the close mesh.”

“Then Rhoteus snatched up a burning brand from the altar, wood from a plum tree, and swinging it down from the right hand side, broke Charaxus’ temples protected by yellow hair. The hair flared like a dry cornfield, set alight by the quick flames, and the blood seared in the wound gave out a terrible sizzling noise, as a bar of iron is prone to do, when the smith takes it, red-hot, from the fire, with curved tongs, and plunges it into a bath of water: it whistles and hisses immersed in the bubbling liquid.”

This goes on and on and on. If someone was typing this up at work, IT would definitely be notified and a security guard would show up and hand you an empty paper box and stand there while you packed up your trinkets and awards.

The end result? The Lapiths win, and the Centaurs are driven away.

Battle of the Centaurs, Classy & Civil

This may seem like a relatively uneventful bit of Greek Mythology, but it’s quite the opposite.

Wait, did I just describe this vicious, disemboweling battle as “uneventful”? Well, yes, but I didn’t mean it like that. What I mean is that in the scheme of things, we aren’t discussing a story of how the world was created, or why the wind blows, or who to pray to if you want your forge fixed.

But to the Ancient Greeks, this story was vital.

You see it everywhere. On the pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia? Centauromachy. On the frieze of the Temple of Hephaestus at the Ancient Agora of Athens? Centauromachy. On the metopes all around the Parthenon? Centauromachy.

So let’s take a look at the Parthenon. After all, it’s the most famous Ancient Greek structure there is. I was going to write “arguably” or some other sort of qualifier in that sentence, but come on. It definitely is. If you want to fight me over it, then go ahead and try.

“Metopes” are little reliefs that were put in the blank spaces in the area above the columns of a Greek temple. Each side showed scenes from a different story, like the Gigantomachy, the Amazonomachy, or our topic: the Centauromachy.

I really want to bring that word back. Or all of them, for that matter. Mach 10 with the Machy.

Most of the metopes were heavily damaged over the years – those in the best condition happen to be the ones we’re talking about. The majority of them are now in the British Museum in London, because: Reasons.

But the big question here is: Why? No, not why are they in London. Don’t get me started down that road. Why did the Ancient Greeks place so much emphasis on the Centauromachy that they stuck images of it in these sacred spots?

Well, the common thinking is that it wasn’t just about the story itself, but what it represented.

We aren’t just witnessing a battle between Lapiths and Centaurs; we’re examining a war between civilized man and his animal instincts. Centaurs are half horse, after all.

The Ancient Greeks saw themselves as having conquered these impulses. They’d built a society. They’d erected monuments. They’d constructed civilization. They had food and temples and laws. They didn’t run around weddings, getting drunk and abducting women. They knew better.

Defeat of the id. Reason over Discord. Order over Chaos.

I think it’s fair to say they had a point — especially when you consider how much of modern Western civilization is built on the foundations the Ancient Greeks poured.

Nude Dudes

This brings us back to the “Battle of the Centaurs” by Michelangelo. The most obvious question you might be asking is: “Where the hell are the Centaurs?”

Well, they’re there. You just don’t see much of the horse parts. There is one part of a horse body near the bottom, but you don’t see much of anyone’s lower bodies in general.

To understand this, I think you have to consider who Michelangelo was, and what he liked sculpting. Above all else, Michelangelo loved depicting naked dudes. Now sure, Michelangelo was likely gay, but aside from that, he had a great appreciation for the male form in an artistic sense.

Remember, God created Man in his own image. Or that was the prevailing belief back then, anyway. God made man, Michelangelo depicted man.

We also have to consider that depicting horses was, and is, entirely different from depicting a human. Leonardo da Vinci famously spent years of his life studying and drawing horses, just because he planned on making one horse sculpture. Just because you were good at sculpting men didn’t mean you could just pick up a chisel and sculpt a horse.

I think it’s almost certain Michelangelo picked this subject because he wanted to show off his knowledge of anatomy – he’d later spend time at a hospital attached to a church in Florence, dissecting bodies. 

But we also have to consider the Renaissance itself. Not only were people fascinated with rediscovering the ancient world, but there’s also the Greek emphasis on highlighting their conquering of their animal instincts.

A similar case could be made here. Isn’t it possible Michelangelo and his Important Renaissance Dude friends saw themselves as conquering their uncivilized Medieval past?

No matter what his reasons were, we wind up with this churning clash between men and Centaurs, all struggling against one another, as they seemingly strive to extract themselves from this block of marble.

More than anything else, that’s what’s I find fascinating about it. Creating relief sculptures was fairly common at the time, but you didn’t really see images where it looks like figures are pulling themselves out of the rock.

And if you look around, especially over on the left, you’ll see people using rocks as weapons – almost as if they pulled boulders straight out of the sculpture itself.

Centaurs, Crumbling & Composed

We also need to look at the composition of the piece itself — what’s that? Composition? It all looks like chaos, how can there be a composition?

Well, look at the corners. Three of them have figures forming L-shapes, bracketing the sculpture. And in the bottom right, a figure that seems to almost be falling out of it.

Traditionally, the bottom right is where you’d depict hell in a painting. Michelangelo did so himself in The Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. So it seems appropriate that the bottom right is where we’d have a figure breaking out of the composition.

Michelangelo also drew upon the reliefs seen on Roman sarcophagi for inspiration. Many of those featured similar scenes, showing anarchy and disorder in a battle — although I don’t know of any depicting layered figures pulling themselves out of the rock.

And, of course, he also looked to his own teacher for inspiration: the elderly Bertoldo, who’d also been inspired by Roman sarcophagi. I guess that makes Bertoldo Professor X. 

But despite all this talk of where the idea for the “Battle of the Centaurs” came from, and what led to its creation, there’s one thing we’ve left out: The fact that it looks unfinished.

I mean, look at the thing. The edges are all scraped and scarred, and you can still see scratches on the faces. It’s certainly not the finely polished type of sculpture we’d typically see.

Much discussion has surrounded whether or not Michelangelo intentionally left this piece unfinished, as kind of an artistic flourish. He certainly tended to do so from time to time, like with the Medici tombs where a figure representing a concept like “Dusk” would be partially unformed. 

I tend to think that’s what he did here. The Lapiths and the Centaurs are emerging from the rock, so it makes sense that they’d still be a part of it.

And it’s not like Michelangelo wasn’t pleased with what he’d made. Like I said before, this was his. He didn’t make it as part of a commission, and he kept it for his entire life.

After he died, his nephew inherited it, along with other property and a few buildings he owned in Florence. It was all passed down, and Michelangelo’s great-nephew turned those buildings into a sort of a museum. It’s still there, called the Casa Buonarroti, where the “Battle of the Centaurs” hangs today.

I think he would’ve liked that. After all, here’s what Convivi had to say about the sculpture and Michelangelo’s opinion of it:

>“…I recall hearing him say that, whenever he sees it again, he realizes what a great wrong he committed against nature by not promptly pursuing the art of sculpture, judging by that work how well he could succeed.”

He spent decades working for others. Everything from the Pieta to the David to the Sistine Chapel was commissioned. He was constantly being pulled in different directions, told to start one work, stop another, or give up years on a gargantuan painting project he never wanted in the first place.

This, I believe, is Michelangelo at his most pure. Artistic expression, unbridled. Yes, that was a Centaur joke.