Battle of Cascina (Michelangelo)

Battle of Cascina was a fresco commissioned from Michelangelo by the Florentine statesman Piero Soderini for the Hall of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio, intended to depict the moment during the 1364 battle when Florentine soldiers bathing in the Arno scrambled to arms at a surprise Pisan attack. Michelangelo completed only a full preparatory cartoon before Pope Julius II summoned him to Rome to work on the pope's tomb, and the fresco itself was never painted. According to Giorgio Vasari the cartoon was later cut into pieces and dispersed across Italy, with the last known fragments seen in Mantua.