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Paolo Uccello (1397–1475)
Battaglia di San Romano/ Battle of San Romano, c. from 1436 until 1440
Tempera on panel
height: 188 cm (74 in); width: 327 cm (10.7 ft)
Uffizi Gallery
Particularly lovely are the background landscapes, especially in the Florence panel, with scenes of grape harvesting and hunting rediscovered after the 1954 cleaning.
The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of linear perspective in early Italian Renaissance painting, and are unusual as a major secular commission. The paintings are in egg tempera on wooden panels, each over 3 metres long. According to the National Gallery, the panels were commissioned by a member of the Bartolini Salimbeni family in Florence sometime between 1435 and 1460. The paintings were much admired in the 15th century; Lorenzo de' Medici so coveted them that he purchased one and had the remaining two forcibly removed to the Palazzo Medici. They are now divided between three collections, the National Gallery, London, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. More on this painting
Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, c. probably about 1438-40
Egg tempera with walnut oil and linseed oil on poplar
182 × 320 cm
The National Gallery
In all three the battle scene is interpreted in terms of a chaotic melee of horsemen, lances and horses in a desperate struggle, portrayed through an endless series of superimposed and intersecting perspective planes. As in the stories from the life of Noah in Santa Maria Novella, here too the movement which should animate the scenes appears to be frozen, as it were, by the isolation of the individual details, all realistically portrayed. See, for instance, the elaborate heavy armour, the leather saddles, the gilded studs, the horses' shiny coats, and of course the splendid "mazzocchi', the huge multifaceted headgear that Uccello often included in his pictyres due to the specific difficulty of painting it in proper perspective. More on this painting
Niccolò Mauruzzi (or Mauruzi), best known as Niccolò da Tolentino (c. 1350 – March 20, 1435) was an Italian condottiero.
A member of the Mauruzi della Stacciola family of Tolentino, he fled from that city in 1370 after a dispute with his relatives. He then fought under several condottieri. In 1406–1407 he commanded the troops of Gabrino Fondulo, lord of Cremona, and subsequently served under Pandolfo III Malatesta, lord of Fano and Cesena.
After obtaining the title of count and the castle of Stacciola near the Metauro river from Malatesta, he was hired by numerous Italian lords. In 1431 he was made seignior of Borgo San Sepolcro by Papal decree, but the following year he lost it when he served under the Florentines, whose armies he led from June 1423 to May 1434, with intervals as Papal commander-in-chief in 1424 and 1428–1432, and commander of Milanese troops in 1432.
For Florence he seized Brescia and won the Battle of Maclodio (October 12, 1427). After these successes he was appointed capitano generale (commander-in-chief) of the Republic in 1431 and in 1432 he was sent as commander of coalition against Francesco I Sforza in Romagna, where he was victorious at the Battle of San Romano, and was commemorated in a painting of the battle by Paolo Uccello. A portrait of Niccolò was executed in Santa Maria Novella in memory of his deeds.
In 1434 he was captured by the Visconti and thrown into a ravine. He survived, but died of the wounds the following year at Borgo Val di Taro. He was buried in Santa Maria del fiore in Florence. A celebrating fresco by Andrea del Castagno was commissioned for his tomb by the Florentine commune. More on Niccolò Mauruzzi
Paolo Uccello (1397–1475)
The Decisive Attack of Micheletto Attendolo at San Romano, c. 1438
Tempera on panel
height: 180 cm (70.8 in); width: 316 cm (10.3 ft)
Louvre Museum
In the Louvre panel there is a formal subtext created by strong decorative elements, such as the tights of contrasting colours worn by the soldiers on the left, or the arrangement of the lances, which form a series of patterns and movements that echo the horses and their riders. As could be expected, foreshortening and perspective are devices favoured by the artist. The landscape has been sacrificed to the figural action. More on this painting
Paolo Uccello combined an International Gothic figure style and love of decorative effects with a profound interest in linear perspective, characteristic of the Early Renaissance. Both these features of his art are shown particularly clearly in 'The Battle of San Romano'.
Uccello was trained under the sculptor Ghiberti from about 1407 to 1414 and worked in Venice as a designer of mosaics (1425-30). A pioneer of studies in linear perspective, he executed major fresco commissions utilising the technique to different ends. The equestrian 'Sir John Hawkwood' in Florence Cathedral, (1436), manipulates perspective for the sake of illusionism; 'The Flood' in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, (1447) uses it to enhance expression, probably under the influence of Donatello. His domestic decorations, however, devalue these effects by stressing colour and surface pattern. More on Paolo Uccello
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