It wasn't certainly for the heroic nature of the soldiers, neither for the drama of the events that the battle of Anghiari made history, rather because the Magistrates of Florence decided to entrust Leonardo da Vinci with the task to celebrate the event in a fresco in Palazzo Vecchio, in the Council Room.

According to the legend, the task was entrusted both to him and to Michelangelo, in a sort of competition that was won by the author of the Gioconda. In fact, the two great artists divided the work between them since Michelangelo was entrusted with the task of representing the Battle of Cascina on the opposite side of the room. Once Leonardo had worked out the scheme of his work, the decision was made to have its central part painted, which portrayed the soldiers' struggle around the flag. The artist worked at the drawings for two years till when he decided to leave for Milan.
In 1503 Leonardo started to study his work and he began to work on the wall in 1504. On his return the work was unfortunately damaged and Leonardo decided not to carry it on, since it was definitively compromised. The fresco was then unfinished and deteriorated a lot. It was replaced in 1563 by a decoration of Vasari. Besides, also the big preliminary cartoons, the presumed model on panel and the wax models were lost. Luckily we still have evidence of them also because during the two years when Leonardo did not carry on his works, many artists studies and copied the fresco. Today Leonardo's work is known thanks to almost fifteen copies in painting, some engravings and drawings in Vinciano's own hand, who had deeply studied the work reproducing also the soldiers' faces. Some reproductions made by Rubens are preserved at the Louvre in Parigi, and a study of the battle of Anghiari ascribed to the painter Biagio di Antonio, dated 1470, can be seen at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
Recently, about at the beginning of summer 2005, the news was spread that a wall would be found in Palazzo Vecchio on which the battle of Anghiari is portrayed". For some time some scholars, including the well-known engineer Maurizio Seracini, (in search of Leonardo's masterpiece for years) had been saying that Vasari had not covered his predecessor's work. According to Seracini's hypothesis, traces of the lost fresco could be in a cavity behind the wall decorated by Vasari with the "Battle of Marciano".