Battle of the Nudes

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Battle of the Nudes: Pollaiuolo's Renaissance Masterpiece NTONIO DEL POLLAIUOLO (Italian, 1431-1498) was a renowned Florentine painter, sculptor, draftsman, and goldsmith who was particularly admired for his dynamic and expressive portrayal of the human figure. He carried out a wide range of projects including a series of Hercules paintings (now lost) for the powerful Medici family in Florence, designs for embroidered vestments, monumental tombs for Popes Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, small bronze sculptures, and reliefs. 1 Today, however, a relatively small number of his works survive, and he is perhaps most widely known for his magnificent engraving, Battle of the Nudes [1]. Its arresting image, unusually grand scale, 2 and superior execution make this print—the first engraving to bear an artist's full signature—a landmark in Italian Renaissance art. The sixteenth-century artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari described the print, and Pollaiuolo's skill: "He engraved on copper a battle of nude figures all girt round with a chain; and after this one he made other engravings, with much better workmanship than had been shown by the other masters who had lived before him." 3 His print is also considered among the first major artistic achievements in the history of Italian engraving. Pollaiuolo developed an unusually refined technique that simulates the V-shaped zigzag or "return stroke" found in pen and ink drawings: when drawing a series of parallel lines, sometimes the pen drags lightly across the paper as the hand returns to the starting position, leaving a fine ink line at a slightly acute angle between the parallel lines. 4 A This continuous back and forth line is effortless with a drawing tool such as a quill pen. To emulate such a stroke in engraving, Pollaiuolo carefully cut two discrete rows of parallel lines—one at a slight angle to the other—seamlessly integrating the two, which form elongated Vs where they converge at either end (fig. 1). He used this technique to great effect in the modeling of the muscular bodies; he also changed the direction of his parallel shading lines to articulate the anatomy of his figures. This was a considerable advancement over the more rudimentary parallel shading and crosshatching found in earlier prints. 25
Pollaiuolo's print is also something of a conundrum, however. Scholars have searched in vain to identify the specific subject of the image and continue to debate its dating (suggestions have ranged from 1465 to around 1489), seeking stylistic and technical evidence in a period for which printmaking documentation is severely lacking. Remarkably, the Battle appears to be Pollaiuolo's only existing print. De- spite Vasari's suggestion that there were other examples (which may have been de- stroyed over time), there are no known prints executed by the same hand preceding or following the Battle that could suggest the development of his engraving style or technique. 5 The Cleveland Museum of Art's unique first state of the Battle of the Nudes has long been regarded as the exemplary early impression, printed before the plate began to wear and was supposedly re-engraved by another hand. All other known impressions (approximately forty-eight in number) are second states, pulled from the reworked plate. The silvery, harmonious, drawing-like character of Cleveland's first-state impression appears to give way to an image of stronger black and white contrasts in second-state impressions. In fact, the tonalities of some early second-state impressions, such as that in the Fogg Museum of Art [2], resemble the black and silver niello plaques produced in Pollaiuolo's and other quattrocento goldsmith workshops [22]. Aside from their compelling aesthetic qualities, part of the fascination of old master prints, especially works such as the Battle that were created during the early history of the medium, is the intrigue of their peculiarities and the close looking they inspire. By bringing together multiple impressions of the second state to com- pare with Cleveland's first state, this exhibition offers the opportunity for close comparative study that reveals a new understanding of the changes between the first and second states and what agents might have contributed to the apparent differences. The use of variant inks and the possibility of Pollaiuolo's own modifica- tions of the image in the second state—rather than the re-engraving of weakened lines by someone else-—suggest aesthetic choices and accepted differences between impressions that must alter our previous methods of evaluating Pollaiuolo's engraving, and possibly of other early Italian engravings as well. 6 These observations expand our conception of what constitutes a "good" impression of an early Italian engraving, beyond the superb qualities of the Cleveland impression, and may suggest a motivation for the changes in the second state. New information about plate wear and watermarks helps us begin to propose a rough chronology for extant impressions. These and other issues will be explored using evidence gathered from existing impressions of Pollaiuolo's engraving and in the context of his broader artistic concerns, as represented by his work in a variety of media. 26
Page 1: Battle of the Nudes POLLAIUOLO'S RE
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Page 8 and 9: tance the image appears silvery gra
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Page 12 and 13: and eliminating the subtlety of mod
Page 14 and 15: were so enamored of them that they
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Page 20 and 21: ously he renders the limbs." 42 A c
Page 22 and 23: own inscription on the tomb of Sixt
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Page 34 and 35: Italian printmaker, possibly Paduan
Page 36 and 37: of the Pollaiuolo" (Ph.D. diss., Co
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Battle of the Nudes

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