Battle of the Nudes

Notes
1. The lost paintings are believed
to have depicted three subjects
from the Labors of Hercules:
Hercules killing the Nemean lion,
Hercules and the Hydra, and
Hercules and Antaeus (the com-
positions of the last two are pre-
sumed to be represented by the
much smaller versions of these
subjects painted on panel, also by
Pollaiuolo, now in the collection
of the Uffizi in Florence; loss of
paint around the edges of the
panels suggests a previous frame
or perhaps insertion in some type
of furnishing); the designs for
embroidered vestments were
commissioned by the merchants'
guild for the celebrant to wear
during special services at the
Florence Baptistery and are now
housed in the Museo dell'Opera
del Duomo; the Tomb of Pope
Sixtus IV, 1493, and Tomb of Pope
Innocent VIII, 1498, both in
bronze, remain at St. Peter's Ba-
silica, the Vatican; the most fa-
mous of his small bronze sculp-
tures, Hercules and Antaeus (see
fig. 16), once owned by the
Medici family, is now in the
Museo Nazionale del Bargello,
Florence; and the bronze relief
panel Birth of John the Baptist,
made for the large silver altar for
the Florence Baptistery, is now
also in the Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo. See Leopold D. Ettlinger,
Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo: Com-
plete Edition with a Critical Cata-
logue (London, 1978): nos. 18, 20,
21, 25, 26, and 44 (all illustrated
except no. 44).
2. The engraving plate measured
approximately 41.2 x 61 cm,
which is unusually large, for most
engravings produced in the 15th
century were half that size or
smaller. There are a few excep-
tions: Bernardo Prevedari's Inte-
rior of a Church after Bramante,
1481, 70.5 x 51.3 cm; attributed to
Baccio Baldini, Judgment Hall of
Pilate, 43.5 x 58.1 cm; and
Francesco Rosselli, Assumption of
the Virgin, 1490s, 82.6 x 56 cm
overall, but printed from two
plates, each approximately 41.3 x
56 cm. Even the largest plates
used for the Mantegna engrav-
ings do not appear to have ex-
ceeded 37 x 48 cm; see Jane
56
Martineau, ed., Andrea Mantegna,
exh. cat., Royal Academy/Metro-
politan Museum of Art (London/
New York, 1992), 469. Yet the
large scale of Pollaiuolo's figures,
which measure approximately
25.5 cm tall, is also exceptional,
even when compared with the
above examples.
3. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects,
trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New
York/Toronto, 1996), 1: 533.
4. The continued debate over
whether the engraved zigzag
shading technique was developed
in the Mantegna engravings or
Pollaiuolo's Battle is complicated
by the lack of documented evi-
dence and the disagreement
among scholars about the relative
chronologies of these prints. Most
recently, Shelley Fletcher has
suggested that the two artists
may have developed the tech-
nique independently of one an-
other; she views Mantegna's use
of the zigzag or simulated return
stroke as a natural development
in the evolution of his engraving
style, as she has outlined in "A
Closer Look at Mantegna's
Prints," Print Quarterly 18 (2001),
19-22. She also suggests that
Pollaiuolo's influence may have
been in the increased elegance of
line and streamlining of pattern
evident in Mantegna's Bacchanal
with a Wine Vat [12], the first of
his engravings where this specific
zigzag technique appears, as well
as in the more widely spaced
modeling lines found in its pen-
dant engraving, Bacchanal with
Silenus. Basically, the concept is
the same for both artists but the
manner of execution differs—
more refined and delicate in
Pollaiuolo, more idiosyncratic
and varied in the Mantegna ex-
amples. Given the fame of the
two artists, however, it seems
more likely tha t one might have
adopted and modified the other's
idea. Some argue that the tech-
nique was the outcome of
Pollaiuolo's prowess as a gold-
smith and knowledge of working
in metal, and his renown as a
master draftsman and designer
would have further contributed
to his ability to devise such a
technique. Others suggest that
the drawing-like character of the
resulting effect points more to-
ward Mantegna's approach to
drawing and the particularly
flexible and diverse drawing-like
qualities of his engravings.
Alison Wright has suggested that
the expanded use of interior
modeling in Pollaiuolo's engrav-
ing, in a manner less typical of his
drawing technique, may indicate
adaptation of the long parallel
and zigzag strokes used in the
Mantegna examples; see Alison
Wright, "Mantegna and
Pollaiuolo: Artistic Personality
and the Marketing of Invention,"
in Stuart Currie, ed., Drawing
1400-1600: Invention and Innova-
tion (Aldershot, U.K., 1998). How-
ever, Pollaiuolo may have created
this method of shading to de-
scribe the modeling of his figures
more explicitly, and it may have
been the only means available to
him to achieve the effects of tonal
modeling that he produced with
wash in his drawings. Yet without
other examples of Pollaiuolo's
engraved works (if they existed)
for comparison, one can only
speculate about which artist to
credit with originating the tech-
niques, and perhaps it is most
reasonable to surmise that they
were aware of each other's work
and that each may have re-
sponded by adjusting his ap-
proach to some degree.
5. Various prints have been attrib-
uted to Pollaiuolo over the years,
but most of them are now recog-
nized as the work of other
printmakers, sometimes based on
Pollaiuolo's designs but clearly
not engraved by his hand. The
first systematic catalogue of
prints listed by artist was com-
piled by Adam Bartsch in his
volume on early Italian engravers
(Le peintre-graveur [Vienna, 1811],
13: 202-4). He lists three prints by
Pollaiuolo: Battle of the Nudes
(erroneously entitled "The Gladi-
ators"); Hercules and Antaeus (now
attributed to the Master of 1515,
based on a design by Andrea
Mantegna); and the so-called
Hercules and the Giants (now at-
tributed to an anonymous North