Some people will already have seen the duel in honor of Leonardo Torricini, but here I would like to present some additional pics of my contribution. The figures are identical (including the painting mistakes that I detected when it was too late for corrections…), but I have experimented a bit with the rest.
First, Bluefalchion had suggested that we took our duel photos with a neutral background, and that perfectly made sense to me, since the focus should be on the figures as such. However, I always like to see how a scene looks like with a realistic background. Therefore, here are some photos using a genuine Tuscany landscape. Modern Tuscany is roughly identical to ancient Etruria, where the scene is set, but it is also the region of Italy where Leonardo lived, so – as so often in world history – everything is related to everything else.
Second, I also experimented with the pyre. My initial idea was to have a big funeral pyre with blazing flames, but when the thing was finished, I realized that I could not use it for the duel: It was just too big and distracting. So I produced the small, burnt-down pyre with just a bit of smoke shown above.
However, it was an attempt at showing fire in a diorama and a sort of test-run for another project where I will need flames, too. So here comes the burning pyre: