Three giants of the Italian Renaissance who were involved in fierce competition with each other, Leonardo, the master, Michelangelo the brooding upstart genius, and Raphael, the artist who carefully crafted his stellar career in the shadows, to emerge as a bright light that was tragically extinguished by an early death just as he began to be recognised as an artist in his own right. "Everything that Raphael had, he took from me", is what Michelangelo remarked, as Pope Julius II pitted them against each other in the Vatican.