Battle of the Nudes

veloped a very consistent and lucid drawing style, predominantly figural and often
based on live models; the resulting clear contours gently modeled in light wash
reflect the legibility required of goldsmith work. Two of his rarer grand narrative
compositions (the Deluge and Moses on Mount Sinai) were later reproduced as en-
gravings by Francesco Rosselli (1448-1508/25?) in the 1490s after Maso's death, and
certainly Finiguerra's drawing style has been recognized as influential in much of
early Florentine printmaking. 47 Pollaiuolo's similarly goldsmith-like approach to
drawing, in the emphasis on clear contour, revealed a more flexible approach in a
dynamic pen line than that found in the more resolutely consistent pen over metal
point approach in the Finiguerra workshop. Pollaiuolo was influenced, as described
above, by his more diverse experience as a painter and sculptor, which in turn may
have also helped him win more ambitious commissions than Finiguerra as a de-
signer. 48 However, despite the significance of such commissions as the Hercules
paintings, or the St. Sebastian altarpiece for his workshop, Pollaiuolo's reputation
rested on his impact as a maestro di disegno, as evidenced by the enormous extent
to which his figural works were copied and imitated; it was in this role that he
made his most significant contribution to Italian Renaissance art. The sixteenth-
century goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini confirmed Pollaiuolo's influence
as "a goldsmith and a draughtsman of such skill that all the goldsmiths made use of
his beautiful designs, which were of such excellence that many of the best sculptors
and painters also use them .. . [he] did little else but admirable drawing and always
kept faith with that great disegno." 49
The broader relationship of the maestro di disegno to Florentine artistic prac-
tice in general is widely acknowledged. The importance is specifically emphasized
as a requirement for master goldsmiths—significantly, Pollaiuolo retained his mem-
bership in the goldsmith guild and identified himself with the profession through-
out his life, despite his endeavors in other media—in Biringuccio's treatise on
metallurgy of 1540:
Those who work in gold and silver must outdistance all other craftsmen in
learning and achievement to the same degree that their materials outdistance
all others in nobility. Therefore, it is necessary first of all to be a good designer,
because design is the key that opens the doors not only to the goldsmith's craft
but to all others. . . . There are, in short, three things . . . that are greatly es-
teemed in this art: first, engraving and making figures or foliage in full or bas-
relief; next, drawing out a vessel in silver or gold . . . and third, setting a gem
accurately and gracefully. 50
It is in this light that scholars such as Leopold D. Ettlinger and Francis Ames-Lewis
have been inclined to view Pollaiuolo's Battle engraving as a "demonstration" piece
specifically created as a way to disseminate and lay claim to artistic ideas (specifi-
cally the anatomy of the male nude figure in action), despite the unprecedented na-
ture of this kind of self-advertisement by an artist. 51 The extent of Pollaiuolo's role
as a maestro di disegno is revealed in the range of copies and adaptations of his
work, many through exchanges in graphic forms, but interwoven with associations
with other media appropriate to Pollaiuolo's diverse talents—as indicated in his
44