ABSTRACT
I believe that this is the first in the series of the Charlton lectures whose subject is a work of art which no longer exists. Not only has Michelangelo’s cartoon for the battle of Cascina not survived. It only existed for about ten years, and it only took the artist a few months to execute. The fact that we can still be interested in something which occupied so small a portion of the artist’s long life, which survived for so short a time and which was dismembered as long as four and a half centuries ago is in itself an illustration of the stature of the man. the quatercentenary of whose death we have been commemorating this year.
