Battle of the Nudes

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of the Pollaiuolo" (Ph.D. diss., Courtauld Institute, University of London, 1992), 23-30, and Alison Wright, "Antonio Pollaiuolo Maestro di disegno," in Elizabeth Cropper, ed., Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnifi- cent (Bologna/Baltimore, 1994), 131-46. 30. Wright, in Rubin and Wright, Renaissance Florence, 264; Pliny 35.67-68. See also Wright, "Di- mensional Tension," 69-70. 31. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of De Pictura and De Statua, ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson (London, 1972), 101. 32. Ibid., 79. 33. Laurie Fusco, "The Use of Sculptural Models by Painters in 15th-century Italy," Art Bulletin 64 (1982), 175-94. 34. See examples from the Villard de Honnecourt Sketchbook, Fig- ures based on Geometric Shapes, c. 1235, Bibilotheque Nationale, Paris; Children Playing from a Neopolitan sketchbook, late 14th century, Pierpont Morgan Li- brary, New York; and Horsemen, from the workshop of Bartolo di Fredi, c. 1370, Musee Bonnat, Bayonne; reproduced in Ettlinger, Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, figs. 12, 13, and 14. 35. As noted by Ettlinger (Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, 159), Pollaiuolo's drawings present a special problem in that a rela- tively small number of sheets have survived; because his style quickly became popular, there are workshop replicas, copies (some- times of a later date), and many other works executed in his man- ner. Some drawings attributed to Pollaiuolo that share affinities with the style of Maso Finiguerra have also complicated attribu- tions at times. For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to discuss drawings that have been generally accepted by current scholarship as attributable to Pollaiuolo. Bernard Berenson, Maud Cruttwell, and Sergio Ortolani did not believe this drawing was by Pollaiuolo's hand: Berenson (The Drawings of the Florentine Painters [Chicago, 1938], 2: 271) gives the work to the school of Pollaiuolo, as does Cruttwell (Antonio Pollaiuolo, 59 battle of nude figures" (Vasari, Lives, 1: 533). 40. For detailed discussion of Pollaiuolo's correct anatomical observations, slight exaggera- tions, and inaccuracies, as re- vealed in his nude figures, and the unlikelihood that he practiced dissection, see Laurie Fusco, "The Nude as Protagonist: Pollaiuolo's Figural Style Explicated by Leonardo's Study of Static Anatomy, Movement and Func- tional Anatomy" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1978), 16- 25. Bernard Schultz (Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy [Ann Arbor, 1985], 51-66) concludes that Pollaiuolo may have "per- formed limited dissections in the service of his art" in light of a 1482 papal brief, by Sixtus IV, approving the practice of dissection by ecclesiastical permission and the possible contact between noted anatomist Gabriele Zerbi and Pollaiuolo at the papal court between 1482/83 and 1494. 41. Wright, in Rubin and Wright, Renaissance Florence, 245. 42. "[A]ntonii Jaco[b]i excelentis- simi ac eximii florentini pictoris scultorisque prestantissimi hoc opus est./Umquam hominum imaginem fecit/Vide quam mirum in membra redigit." This inscription appears to be written in an ink that is contemporary to the drawing. Ettlinger (Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, 161) has sug- gested that the drawing was inscribed by a 15th-century owner or collector. 43. A recent article by Lorenza Melli, "Sull'uso della carta lucida nel Quattrocento e un esempio per il Pollaiolo," Paragone: Arte, no. 316 (March 2001), 3-9, makes the very intriguing suggestion that the British Museum copy was actually made by tracing Pollaiuolo's original, following a pedagogical practice recom- mended by Cennino Cennini in his Libro dell'Arte (c. 1400). This would account for the closeness of the copy; the slightly smaller scale of the British Museum ver- sion could be explained by the possibility that the parchment support could have shrunk in reaction to environmental condi- tions; and the necessary prepara- tion of the parchment to make it transparent for tracing could account in part for the discolora-
60 graving to a drawing of the Death of Pentheus by Marco Zoppo (1432/33-1478) in the British Museum, from the early 1470s. But this supposition seems less convincing given the differences in articulation of musculature and absence of modeling in the thigh, the slightly more frontal orienta- tion of the face, and the elevation of the body by the raised out- stretched leg of Zoppo's figure. Since there was a known antique prototype for this figure, Zoppo could have used it as a model instead (perhaps based on a cast found in the workshop of Squarcione, with whom Zoppo was affiliated from the 1450s), or he might have known Pollaiuolo's drawing and adapted the figure—but the connection does not presuppose that Zoppo would have to have known the engraving, thereby securing a date for the print. This also raises a similar question with regard to the incunabula illuminations: Could they be based on Pollaiuolo's drawing rather than the print? Especially if the drawing was out of the Squarcione family's hands from 1462-74; perhaps the drawing was in Venice? 59. See note 56 above. 60. For further discussion of beasts and centaurs in relation to early human ancestors, irrational- ity, and the inability to control violent impulses, see Wright, in Rubin and Wright, Renaissance Florence, 284. 61. Zachariah Leaving the Temple, Galleria degli Uffizi (inv. 98 F) and St. John the Baptist Questioned, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett (inv. 5028). The latter drawing is reproduced in Rubin and Wright, Renaissance Florence, 242, no. 49. For discussion of Pollaiuolo's embroideries as sources for some of the drawings in The Florentine Picture Chronicle in the British Museum, see Lucy Whitaker, "Maso Finiguerra, Baccio Baldini and The Florentine Picture Chronicle," in Elizabeth Cropper, ed., Floren- tine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Bologna/Balti- more, 1994), 183. 62. Various early Florentine prints that appear to have been executed by the same hand, including one cycle of Prophets and Sibyls, the Planets, Judgement H of Pilate, and the engraved illus trations for Dante's Divine Com edy based on Botticelli's drawings, have long been attributed the largely undocumented figur Baccio Baldini. For recent argu ments regarding the historical basis for the attribution of the Divine Comedy illustrations, an Baldini's existence in general, s Peter Keller, "The Engravings i the 1481 Edition of the Divine Comedy," in Hein.-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Sandro Botticel The Drawings for Dante's Divin Comedy (London, 2001), 326-3 and Mark Zucker, review of Altcappenberg, Sandro Botticel Print Quarterly 19 (2002), 81-8 63. See Evans, "Pollaiuolo, Dur and the Master IAM van Zwolle 114-16. 64. Perhaps the most famous example is Durer's 1494 copy after Andrea Mantegna's Battle the Sea Gods; see Walter Straus The Complete Drawings of Albr Durer (New York, 1974), no. 14 13. In her forthcoming book, Albrecht Durer and the Venetia Renaissance (Cambridge, in pre Katherine Luber makes the case that Durer may not have travele to Italy until 1504, and that his drawings showing the influence of Italian works of art dating to the 1490s are entirely based on engraved sources he would have seen in Nuremberg, brought to Germany via active trade routes possibly through the hands of on of Germany's most influential humanists and Durer's friend and supporter, Willibald Pirckheimer. I am grateful to Suzanne Boorsch for bringing th information to my attention and to Katherine Luber for sharing her thoughts with me in advance of the publication of her book. 65. Although this drawing has been described as after a "lost" engraving by Pollaiuolo, I see n reason, given the close correspo dences in scale and figure type (including physiognomy) between Pollaiuolo's archer and Durer's lunging figure, why an artist of Durer's skill and knack for invention could not have adapted the figure from the Batt of the Nudes to his own purpose 66. Evans, "Pollaiuolo, Durer, a the Master 1AM van Zwolle," 1
Page 1 and 2: Battle of the Nudes POLLAIUOLO'S RE
Page 3 and 4: Pollaiuolo's print is also somethin
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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
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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 38: 67. Martin Clayton, Raphael and His

Battle of the Nudes

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