How he made himself great in sculpture is not our theme. He was thirty and already the master of the David and the Pietà before he began to be a painter. His first commission, in 1505, was for a Holy Family, Figure 195, in medallion form for Agnolo Doni, who at the same time was having his portrait painted by Raphael. The picture as we see it in the Uffizi shows a master who thinks in fresco. The brown flesh, the dull yellows and blues of the draperies could have come from the Brancacci chapel. Remarkable is the complete waiver of charm and sweetness. The superb figures are skilfully contorted into interesting poses, the circle is densely filled and the few interstices left by the main figures are filled with athletic nudes. The aim, which is successfully attained, is an austere grandeur. There is to be no ordinary human appeal in our youthful Lord and his parents. [Illustration: FIG. 196. Michelangelo. Detail from Cartoon of the Bathers, by the contemporary engraver, Marcantonio. ] At this moment Leonardo was already well advanced on the cartoon for the Battle of the Standard, treating it in terms of literal narrative. In 1505 Michelangelo received a signal honor in the commission for the companion fresco, the Battle of Pisa. Both were for the Hall of the Great Council. We can imagine Michelangelo casting about for a reason to abandon a narrative treatment and to find one that could be expressed by the nude. He found it in an incident in Leonardo Aretino’s Chronicle. It seemed that the trumpet found the Florentine men-at-arms bathing in the Arno. Here was the theme of what was properly called The Bathers. Great muscular forms are drawing themselves up the bank, and are hurrying into clothes and armor. We have not a fight, but its alarm and imminence, a fine imaginative substitute for the obvious event. The picture was never executed, and the cartoon, which was the marvel of its day, was soon destroyed, but Michelangelo’s sketches tells us something of the composition, and the contemporary engraver, Marcantonio, Figure 196, has left us a masterly print of the central group. It is plain that Michelangelo made a display of minute anatomy that put his contemporaries to shame, plain also that he subordinated this feature to monumental effect. The failure to execute the fresco and the destruction of the cartoon must count among the capital losses in the history of art.