Inspired by a classical relief created by Bertoldo di Giovanni, the marble sculpture represents the mythic battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs.

A popular subject of art in ancient Greece, the story was suggested to Michelangelo by the classical scholar and poet Poliziano.

[4] Specifically, Michelangelo was inspired by a relief that had been produced for Lorenzo by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a work in bronze that hung in the Medici palace.

[6] Bertoldo took other liberties with his source material and seems to have himself been inspired by the Antonio del Pollaiuolo engraving Battle of the Nudes.

To mark his good intentions Pirithous invited the Centaurs to his wedding to Hippodamia (part of whose name, "Hippo," Ιππο, literally translates as "horse", which may suggest some connection to them).

The relief consists of a mass of nude figures writhing in combat, placed underneath a roughed-out strip in which the artist's chisel marks remain visible.

Forcellino and Cameron describe this break with modern practice as Michelangelo's "own personal revolution", and they point specifically to the left of the relief where a twisting figure becomes "something of an artistic manifesto.

Also remarkable, according to them, is the manner in which Michelangelo sculpted independently of his preparatory drawings, freeing him from the constraints of two-dimensional vision and allowing him to merge the figures fluidly and multi-dimensionally.

[8] The smooth figures of the foreground contrast strongly with the roughly hewn background, created with a subbia chisel.

[1] A traditional sculptor's tool, the subbia produced punched marks that had never before been left as a final surface in a work completed to this degree.

[8] Georgia Illetschko insisted in 2004, these unfinished surfaces are "a conscious compositional element", and not due to a lack of time.