Battle of the Nudes

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own inscription on the tomb of Sixtus IV: "The work of the Florentine Antonio Pollaiuolo, famous in silver, gold, painting, bronze, 1493." 52 An examination of some of the copies and adaptations of Pollaiuolo's imagery in works by other artists may offer some further insight into the motivation behind the Battle of the Nudes engraving. A fairly large (approximately 40 x 59 cm) less so- phisticated engraving, mistitled Battle of Hercules and the Giants [7, 8], appears to be based on a Pollaiuolo drawing that may be partially represented in the Fogg fragment Three Fighting Men [13], which corresponds to the figures at the far right of the composition. Oddly, the engraved composition, like the drawing fragment, appears cropped at the right where a seemingly disembodied hand holds a dagger in the upper corner. The hand should belong to the cut-off warrior, but the spatial rela- tionship does not work. The entire design is apparently preserved in a small copy drawing at the Biblioteca Reale, Turin, attributed to school of Pollaiuolo (fig. 23), which shows a group of twelve battling nudes in the left half of the composition and a nude man with arms tied behind his back running away from this group to- ward four nude or semi-draped men and women near a tree. The extended composition is also represented, in a reverse copy, omitting the woman seated by the tree and the soldier at far left, in a sixteenth-century engraving by the Netherlandish artist Allaert Claesz (fig. 24). 53 The engraved inscription that appears in the com- pleted second state of the anonymous engraving mistitled Battle of Hercules and the Giants [8] identifies the scene as the hero and twelve giants, despite the fact that there are only nine figures in addition to "Hercules," whose name appears on the sheath of his sword. 54 The cropping of figures at the right could allude to other "giants" outside the picture. Yet none of the figures are characterized as overly large in stature and the supposed protagonist/victor is not distinguished in any way, 45
aside from his "label." The inscription thus suggests a misguided attempt to assign a known subject to a generalized battle scene that, like the Battle of the Nudes, has no clear protagonist but appears to draw on imagery from Roman sarcophagi such as the half-fallen warrior seen from the front or the lunging figure with the curved sword, and like the Battle serves as an all'antica invention rather than an illustration of a specific narrative event. (The misnomer is perpetuated, however, because it appears on the second state of the print and serves as a means of differentiating between Pollaiuolo's engraving and the anonymous engraver's similar subject by title.) The engraver's addition of extensive interior modeling (albeit exaggerated and crude, resulting in a schematic and inaccurate anatomical description) and the background vegetation of vines and stalks, which are not indicated in either the Fogg fragment or the expanded copy drawing, were not independently invented, but rather appear to derive from some awareness of the Battle engraving. Although closely spaced parallel shading lines predominate, the contours are weaker, the tonal subtleties Pollaiuolo achieved with his nuanced zigzag strokes are lacking, and the figures appear stiff and awkward. In light of the similarities in scale and nude secular subjects, various scholars have tried to devise a logical narrative con- nection between the two engravings and the drawing Prisoner Led before a Judge (see fig. 18), but to no satisfactory conclusion. 55 Stylistically, the Battle of Hercules and the Giants engraving is typically identified as North Italian (possibly Paduan), based on the consistent, narrowly spaced parallel hatching used for shading and the angular treatment of the broken rocky foreground ledge that is similar to that found in some Mantegna School prints. Thus it does seem probable that the original Pollaiuolo drawing (of which the Fogg fragment may be a part, or which may show the same composition) may have been the cartonum (cartoon) of nude figures that is docu- mented as being among the drawings used as models by students in the art school of Paduan painter Francesco Squarcione (c. 1395-c. 1468) in the 1460s. 56 Whether or not Pollaiuolo ever intended that this composition be engraved remains specula- tion, but it is worthy of note that the Battle of the Nudes presents a more carefully orchestrated composition in which the figures appear more balanced, less crowded together, and overlapped—and thus provides a more complete view of their entire bodies than those found in the Hercules battle image, which are more in keeping with classical battle reliefs. The cropped edge of the Hercules print also suggests the reuse of another image for another purpose. It is also possible that the intention was to reproduce the original drawing on two paired engraving plates, like Mantegna's Battle of the Sea Gods, but for some reason the second plate was never realized. Lilian Armstrong Anderson objected to dating the Hercules print to c. 1500, as Arthur Hind and John Goldsmith Phillips had suggested, 57 observing that some of the figures in the composition correspond to images of putti portrayed in combat in illuminations for several Venetian incunabula printed around 1470; she thus asserts that the print must have been in circulation by the late 1460s. 58 However, one must consider the possibility that the miniaturists who created the illuminations might have known the drawing, particularly during the time it was "stolen" from the Squarcione school. 59 So the print could have been made at any time during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Another possible factor that affects the dating of the print is the suggestion that Pollaiuolo may have created his Battle engraving in re- 46
Page 1 and 2: Battle of the Nudes POLLAIUOLO'S RE
Page 3 and 4: Pollaiuolo's print is also somethin
Page 6 and 7: 5). There also appear to be some re
Page 8 and 9: tance the image appears silvery gra
Page 10 and 11: difficult and time consuming to rec
Page 12 and 13: and eliminating the subtlety of mod
Page 14 and 15: were so enamored of them that they
Page 16 and 17: cution differs in the engraving, th
Page 18 and 19: interior modeling that suggests a s
Page 20 and 21: ously he renders the limbs." 42 A c
Page 24 and 25: sponse to the crude interpretation
Page 26 and 27: attributed to Perugino's most famou
Page 28 and 29: the plate in an attempt to alter th
Page 30 and 31: visited Florence. And although wild
Page 32 and 33: plate was cut, that while the sheer
Page 34 and 35: Italian printmaker, possibly Paduan
Page 36 and 37: of the Pollaiuolo" (Ph.D. diss., Co
Page 38: 67. Martin Clayton, Raphael and His

Battle of the Nudes

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