Battle of the Nudes

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sponse to the crude interpretation of his drawing as represented by the Hercules and the Giants engraving. Among the many examples by other artists that appear to borrow figures from the Hercules battle image is the bizarre and spatially inconsistent composition, Fighting Beasts Regarded by Soldiers [9]. Here the anonymous Florentine engraver created a pastiche: lifting the ax-wielding warrior, complete with ferocious attitude and gaping mouth, from the Hercules image, turning him into a centaur-type beast, changing his ax to a ball and chain weapon on a pole, and setting him to battle with a half-man/half-lion counterpart while elegantly dressed soldiers in classical styled armor calmly look on. Interestingly, the subject has been interpreted as a moralizing contrast between the bestial and rational aspects of man's nature, 60 a theme perhaps not unrelated to issues addressed in the Battle of the Nudes discussed earlier. The pair of soldiers at left are copied from an embroidered design, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (fig. 25), one of twenty-seven surviving panels from a monumental series of narrative designs portraying the life of John the Baptist commissioned from Pollaiuolo for a set of liturgical vestments to be used for services on major feast days in the Florentine Baptistery. Made over a long period (c. 1466-80S), these embroideries were the largest and most detailed series showing the life of St. John in the history of Florentine art. The extensive cycle tested Pollaiuolo's practice of inventive reuse of figures and poses, but his success is evident in the existence of copy drawings, 61 and engravings such as Fighting Beasts Regarded by Soldiers that replicate certain motifs, thus putting into circulation images that would seldom be accessible to the public, except for high holy days at the church. The stylized rendering of hair and fur in the engraving, and the fine patterned shading strokes and hatching, suggest a familiarity with goldsmith work and the so-called fine manner style of engraving practiced by Florentine engravers such as the so-called Baccio Baldini (supposedly active 1460s-80s), 62 very different from the longer diagonal shading and delicate engraving strokes used by Pollaiuolo to suggest subtleties in 47
tonal values and modeling of forms in the Battle of the Nudes. The less schematized rendering of anatomy in the Florentine engraving suggests that it was based on Pollaiuolo's drawing rather than the Hercules engraving, since the North Italian copyist seems to have less of an understanding of musculature. Several Northern European examples testify to the spread and adaptation of Pollaiuolo's imagery outside Italy. Possibly as early as the 1480s and certainly no later than 1496, the Netherlandish engraver Master IAM van Zwolle, who is not known to have traveled to Italy, apparently had access to the Hercules battle engravings as he adapted the ax-wielding figure from that image, showing the figure with upraised arms framing an open-mouthed grimace in his own print Battle of Two Men with a Centaur. The streaming headbands, lithe figures, and pointedly con- trasting poses (shown in side and back views) further underscore a connection to Pollaiuolo's figural ideas as indicated in both battle engravings. 63 Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), known for his fascination with Italian art, also copied and borrowed imagery from Italian engravings. 64 In his drawing study Abduction of a Woman (Rape of the Sabine Women) of 1495 (fig. 26), Durer adapts the lunging pose and figure type of the archer in Pollaiuolo's Battle of the Nudes engraving (within millimeters of the same scale) to portray one of the young Roman men carrying off a Sabine woman. In keeping with Pollaiuolo's composition, Durer's two male figures are also por- trayed so that one faces forward; the other, in mirrored pose, has his back to the viewer. 65 Jorg Breu's creative adaptation of Pollaiuolo's Battle of the Nudes [18] for his 1516 wall fresco design has already been addressed. In contrast, a school of Nuremberg drawing of c. 1500-10 (fig. 27), too weak to be Durer but possibly an artist in his circle, produces a straightforward copy of the figures at the right of the second state of the Hercules battle engraving in pen on pink prepared paper. 66 Pollaiuolo's Italian followers also made use of his figure types as represented in the Battle engravings. One example is A Battle of Naked Men, c. 1500-10 [17] by an artist in the circle of Pietro Perugino (c. 1450-1523). This drawing has recently been 48
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 22 and 23: own inscription on the tomb of Sixt
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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