Paolo di Dono, called Uccello  c. 1397–1475
NG 583 
Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano

Dillian Gordon, 2003

Extracted from:
Dillian Gordon, The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2003).

c. 1438–40?

Egg tempera (identified) with some walnut oil (main panel) and some linseed oil (corner additions) on poplar (identified), 182.0 × 320.0 cm

This painting showing the Battle of San Romano, which took place on 1 June 1432, is one of a series of three battle scenes by Uccello. The other two are in the Uffizi, Florence (signed by Paolo Uccello: PAULI UGIELI OPUS), and the Louvre, Paris. The subject was once wrongly thought to be the Battle of Sant’Egidio of 1416, and to be one of four battle scenes on panel described by Vasari as having been painted by Uccello for the terrace of the Bartolini family in Gualfonda.¹ It was correctly identified as the Battle of San Romano by Eugene Müntz² and then by Herbert Horne.³ Niccolò da Tolentino, riding a white charger, is leading the victorious Florentines into battle.

Technical Notes Technical notes

Restoration

Cleaned while in the Lombardi‐Baldi Collection (see below under Provenance);⁴ cleaned and restored 1962–5.

Condition and technique⁵

NG 583 is on horizontal planks. It is impossible to be certain of the precise number because of the many splits, but judging from the X‐radiograph there may be eight planks, as in the Uffizi panel (see below). They were butt‐joined, not dowelled, and probably strengthened originally by vertical battens, possibly placed where the modern vertical battens now are (see fig. 14). An inserted piece of wood c. 20 × 38.5 cm, placed c. 62 cm from the left‐hand corner, is of uncertain function; however, the cracks in the gesso and paint surface show that it was there from the beginning, before the planks were gessoed. The back was thinned before 1857 (that is, before acquisition by the Gallery) and has been built up with balsa and covered with a waxed canvas.

The painting had three metallic fixings towards the top, presumably designed to anchor it to a wall. The remains of two metallic fixings are visible in the X‐radiograph (fig. 1) and an area of damage in the paint surface indicates where the third one was. The first, which is c. 10 cm long, is placed 21.6 cm (measuring to its centre) from the present left‐hand edge and 24 cm from the top edge. Towards the centre is a second fixing, 148 cm from the left edge, 181 cm from the right edge and 25 cm from the top edge. Approximately 127/130 cm from the central fixing towards the right is an [page 379][page 380]area of damage where the third fixing originally was. Small wooden plugs are visible on the back where the removal of these fixings – presumably when the back was planed – left holes in the wood. The fixings probably consisted of looped metallic pins (in the shape of Ω ) which were inserted before the gesso layer was applied; at the back they created a loop through which a ring, or possibly a bar, could be passed.⁶ The pins at the front were then covered with patches of metal foil (as recommended by Cennino Cennini for covering nails);⁷ in the case of the first fixing the creases and overlaps in the foil can be seen in the X‐radiograph. These fixings were not in themselves sturdy enough to carry the whole weight of the painting; their function would merely have been to immobilise the top part of the painting against the wall. The heavy structure of several horizontal panels would almost certainly have needed some sort of support along the base.

The poplar planks were covered with four vertical strips of canvas (visible in the X‐radiograph, fig. 14) of varying width and with wide gaps between them. The left‐hand strip is c. 78/81 cm wide, the second strip c. 83 cm, and the third and fourth strips both c. 66 cm.

The composition was first outlined directly on the gesso as a preliminary drawing in fluid dark paint or ink, probably lampblack – visible where the paint did not follow the drawing, for example in the red‐ and blue‐stockinged legs immediately behind Niccolò da Tolentino’s white horse (fig. 3). The design was further outlined by incisions where the painted edges border on gold or silver leaf (for example, in Niccolò’s head) and elsewhere. Incised lines are, however, not consistently used throughout. Some of the incised lines were not followed: for example, the incised circle between the recumbent knight and the black lance (fig. 2), the horizontal lance, the incised sword hilt above the page’s left shoulder, and an incised circle above his head. Some incisions were made freehand, but those for the curved parts of the armour were made with a compass, and the compass point is clearly visible in the roundels of the bridles.

Once the painting process was complete, the composition was reinforced in two ways. First, lines were drawn on the painted surface with a light brown paint, as for the features of Niccolò’s face (see detail opposite), including his brow and the folds in his cheeks, the curls of the forelock of his horse, the puffed‐out cheeks of the trumpeters and their hands, and the indentations for holding the lances.⁸ Secondly, outlines were incised while the paint was still soft. In some cases, for instance the shaft of the banner, the edge was then reinforced yet again with paint over the incised line. Characteristic of the processes employed by Uccello is the broken lance beneath the right‐hand black horse: the tip was underdrawn with black – in the other lances the tip was first covered with bole and then silvered (fig. 4), but here the silvering was forgotten – and pink paint applied over the drawing; the straight edges of the lance were drawn and yellow paint applied to the handle, and the edges incised in the soft paint to give a sharp edge; the tip was outlined again with black paint over the pale pink, but never completely finished.

The medium has been identified as mainly egg tempera, with some parts added in a tempera grassa containing walnut oil.⁹ The pigments detected in the painting are traditional for the period and include lead white, ultramarine, mixed with white for the horses’ harnesses, azurite, vermilion, verdigris, lead‐tin yellow (‘type I’), a variety of red and yellow lakes, red lead, charcoal black and earth pigments. The flesh has been painted with a single layer of lead white combined with small quantities of vermilion, and red and brown earths, over a layer of a yellow‐green verdaccio composed of white, green earth, golden ochre and a little red earth.¹⁰

Some changes have taken place in the pigments. Most disturbing to the colour balance of the painting is the extensive darkening of the vermilion – particularly in the harnesses, where it has assumed a greyish‐blue cast – and the darkening of the copper‐containing glazes of the foliage of the roses.

The gold details, such as the horses’ harnesses, are all water‐gilded. Much of the gilding has been given three‐dimensionality by being densely punched and then having a dark green or brown glaze applied: for example, the trumpets (fig. 5), the large orb and the smaller orbs with three feathers (fig. 7), the gold pommels of the saddles, and the page’s sleeve (fig. 8). The pattern of Niccolò’s hat has been inscribed in the gold and the pomegranate pattern picked out in a red glaze with a pattern that disregards its geometric shape (see also below), and the intervening gold incised with vertical hatched strokes and stippled (see detail, p. 381). The gold leaf of the horses’ harnesses has been punched with the type of punch commonly found in the gold leaf of haloes or bordering the frames of altarpieces (fig. 6).

The armour of the knights is of silver leaf applied over a red‐brown bole and sometimes modelled with a blackish glaze identified as soft wood pitch mixed with walnut oil, some of it blotted on, leaving fingerprints – for example, on Niccolò’s leg. Some parts, such as Niccolò’s cuff, had been resilvered prior to the cleaning of 1962.¹¹ Although there has been some oxidation of the silver leaf, some of it is still in good condition. The armour of the knight in profile at the left edge, parts of the torso of the dead knight in the left foreground, some of the armour under the forelegs of Niccolò’s horse and the plume of the helmet of the knight in the left foreground retain their original glazes and have not suffered from oxidation. The mail was originally sgraffito and has been almost entirely repainted; this repaint was left in place during the cleaning of 1962–5.

Other areas of the silver have glazes – for example, red in the barbuta (helmet) carried by the page, the fallen shields in the centre foreground and the knights’ plumes (identified as lac lake), green based on verdigris in the saddle of the knight on a black horse to the right, and ultramarine for parts of the knight’s armour.

Different‐coloured bole has been used for the gold and silver leaf: an orange‐red for the gold and a deeper red‐brown for the silver.

None of Uccello’s three panels of the Battle of San Romano can be said to be in good condition. The alterations and additions to the upper part of all three panels and the extensive use of silver leaf alone would preclude that, but in the case of the National Gallery panel other factors have also affected the state of the paint layers. When the poplar panel arrived in London in 1857 it had already been planed down and its inherent tendency to react to changes in temperature and relative humidity had been restricted by the gluing of six thick, vertical walnut battens to the back. In consequence, original joins had opened, many splits had formed between the joins, and the gesso and paint layers had been loosened and in places lost. The panel was extensively repaired at the National Gallery in 1931, and more work was found to be necessary in 1960, when the restraining battens were removed, the joins and splits glued and loose paint secured. The panel work of 1960, together with the installation of air‐conditioning in the Gallery, has prevented any further deterioration, and the panel now shows no further sign of instability.¹²

The paint surface was not treated kindly during early cleanings; this is the case with all three panels.¹³ Severe but uneven cleaning has worn away paint from the raised edges of cracks over some of the surface, and in places damaged the final paint layer. The two grey horses¹⁴ and the landscape at the top of NG 583 revealed during cleaning in the 1960s (see below) have been worst affected. Some of the horses now appear as flat geometric shapes, having lost much of their modelling.

Nevertheless, much of the picture is in a reasonably good state of preservation, and there are no major losses of paint – apart, of course, from the removal of the original arched top. Many of the gilded areas are very well preserved. For example, Niccolò da Tolentino’s hat and cloak and much of the gilded detail of the horses’ bridles and harnesses retain their original modelled glazes and have not been worn by cleaning, although there has been some loss of glazes over paint, such as in the details of the petals of the white and red roses. All the flesh painting is extremely worn and little remains of the modelling of the faces of Niccolò da Tolentino, his page and the trumpeters.

The original shape of the panel and the corner additions

The three panels probably originally had arched tops: they seem to have been carpentered to fit under a vaulted ceiling (see fig. 9), as first suggested by Umberto Baldini, with irregularly cut corners designed to fit around corbels.¹⁵ At an unknown date (probably in 1484) the arches were cut horizontally approximately 64 cm from the top, and the corners filled in order to convert the panels into rectangles (see figs 14–16).¹⁶ The technique used for the corner additions in NG 583 is consistent with a fifteenth‐century date, but differs from that used in the construction of the rest of the panel in ways which suggest that the additions were executed at a later stage. First, the gesso on the main panel is made up of two layers – initially a layer of gesso grosso (gypsum and anhydrite), then a layer of gesso sottile (gypsum) – whereas the gesso on the additions appears to be just gypsum. A single layer of pure gypsum tends not to have been used by Florentine painters, but was commonly applied by carpenters to frames to be gilded. It is just possible that it was applied by the carpenter who made the additions (see below). Secondly, the binding medium of the painted additions is based on egg tempera with some linseed oil admixed: that is, tempera grassa.¹⁷ The use of linseed oil in the mixed medium in these areas (rather than walnut, which is found in the main panel) again suggests that the corners are later additions, although the technique is still typical of the second half of the fifteenth century. Thirdly, although the green pigment of the foliage on both the main panel and the [page 384][page 385]corners has a black underlayer, as is common in fifteenth‐century Florentine paintings,¹⁸ the painting of the foliage in the additions is slightly different: that in the corners is painted with artificial malachite over the black layer described above, whereas throughout the main panel the greens, such as the rose leaves, are composed of verdigris mixed with lead‐tin yellow, with a copper‐green glaze. The use of artificial malachite over black seems in Tuscany to be restricted to the fifteenth century and to occur only with an egg tempera medium (see also below). The oranges are painted with red lead, with the pigment in the additions microscopically similar to that in the main panel. Leaves were added to the top right‐hand corner and to the main panel; they are brownish with pale yellow flecks containing red lead which has decolorised, and they may have been added in the fifteenth century to integrate the corners with the main panel. The conclusion may be drawn that the additions were executed at a somewhat later stage than the main part of the painting. They appear to be the work of a Florentine craftsman of the fifteenth century,¹⁹ and there are good reasons to suppose that the work was undertaken in 1484 (see below (a, b, c)).

The later overpainting

A further adaptation of the painting was made when part of the landscape was overpainted with a blue sky, removed in the cleaning of 1960 (see fig. 13). Examination of cross‐sections has shown that this overpainting consisted first of a cancellation layer of lead white, which formed a consistent underlayer for a second layer of azurite and lead white bound in an oil and resin mixture.²⁰ These two layers were painted over a layer of darkened varnish. One small area of the sky covered a copper resinate green of earlier foliage which had started to go brown, indicating that some time had elapsed before it was overpainted. Combined with the evidence of the medium used for the blue sky (oil and resin rather than egg), this suggests that it was painted later than the fifteenth century, probably in the sixteenth, and probably when the three paintings were adapted to be shown in one frame(?), possibly after 1512 and certainly before 1598 (see below).

Technique of the Related Paintings Technique of the related paintings

The other two paintings from the series (figs 11 and 12) are in the Uffizi, Florence,²¹ and the Louvre, Paris. A preliminary [page 386]examination of both indicates that they are very close in technique to NG 583.²²

The Florence painting has the same dimensions (182 × 323 cm) and is painted on eight horizontal poplar planks which have been planed at the back.²³ As in NG 583, the planks are covered with four vertical strips of canvas (visible in the X‐radiograph, fig. 16), and the design has been extensively incised for painting. Tracings of the corner additions of the Uffizi panel when placed over NG 583 show that the top right‐hand addition is identical to that of the top left‐hand corner in NG 583, but reversed, while the top left‐hand addition is slightly wider than the top right‐hand corner of NG 583, but reversed, and follows the same curve and extends deeper down.²⁴ Visible in the X‐radiograph of the Uffizi panel is a curved incised line in the top‐left hand corner where the lances stop short of the addition, confirming Umberto Baldini’s statement that the panel was originally arched. There are no obvious signs of metal fixings in the Uffizi panel.

Signs of metal fixings have been detected in the X‐radiograph of the Paris panel, and it has been deduced that this painting, which measures 182 × 317 cm, is on seven horizontal planks. Visible in the X‐radiograph are four broad vertical strips of linen covering the planks, the three to the left measuring 66 cm and the right‐hand one 76.5 cm, with a fifth narrow strip at the extreme right measuring 13 cm. The Paris painting, unlike the other two, has five additional pieces along the top (see diagram, fig. 15), although of course the other two panels could once have had the same, but beginning further up.²⁵ This painting has also been cut along the top, and the curvature where the linen finishes at the left‐hand side, visible in the X‐radiograph, shows that it too was once arched. It has similar additions at the corners: tracings laid over them show that the narrower left corner corresponds in profile to the left corner of NG 583 and to the right corner of the Florence panel, while the wider corner at the right side corresponds to the right corner in NG 583 and the left corner of the Uffizi panel (see figs 14–16).²⁶ The corner additions in [page 387]the Paris painting were certainly made after the main panel had been painted: in the left‐hand corner the yellow lances, which are incised in the main painting, are painted with a thinner ochre mixture lacking lead white, and the incised lines do not continue into the corner addition; in the right‐hand corner the red lances are painted with vermilion over a black underlayer in the main painting, but only in vermilion and lacking any black underlayer where they extend into the corner addition.²⁷

The Paris painting has a further rectangular insertion at the bottom left‐hand corner where there was once a gap, which may have been cut to accommodate a doorway.²⁸ This too was painted later than the main panel: the brownish‐green pigment of the grass is more thinly painted, and examination of cross‐sections of pigment samples shows this green to be a mixture of yellow and black, whereas the greens of the main panel, just above the rectangular addition, contain artificial malachite and the paint has a thick crusty appearance. The composition, with the leaping horse, appears to allow for a doorway. The rectangular addition was probably, although not certainly, inserted when the paintings were made rectangular, having been moved from their original location and adapted for the Camera di Lorenzo (see below), probably in 1484: the use of yellow and black to create the green may perhaps be explained by the desire to match the greens in the foreground, which had already discoloured to a darkish brown in the forty‐odd years that had elapsed since the panel was first painted.

Pending further research, two important differences may be signalled in the Paris painting. First, the application of the linen is slightly different, as described above. Second, artificial malachite, found in the main part of the Paris painting as well as in the corners, is found only in the corners of the London painting and not in the main part, where the greens are a mixture of verdigris and lead‐tin yellow. The earliest example of artificial malachite detected to date occurs in Sassetta’s San Sepolcro altarpiece (for which see p. 325), commissioned in 1437 and completed in 1444.²⁹ Uccello used it again in the Hunt in the Forest (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum), probably a work of the late 1460s.³⁰ The Florence panel has yet to be sampled, but one may tentatively suggest that Uccello introduced this pigment in the Paris painting and continued to use it fairly late in his career, and that, taken with other evidence, this helps to date the Paris painting later than the other two (see below).

The Battle of San Romano in the Palazzo Medici in 1492

NG 583 was one of three paintings of the Rout of San Romano inventoried in the Camera di Lorenzo in the Palazzo Medici (now Riccardi), Florence, in 1492: ‘nella chamera grande terrena detta la chamera di Lorenzo…Sei quadri chorniciati atorno e messi d’oro sopra la detta spalliera et sopra al lettuccio, di br.42 lunghi et alti br.iii½, dipinti c[i]oè tre della Rotta di San Romano e uno di battaglie e draghi et lioni et uno della storia di Paris, di mano di Pagolo Ucello e uno di mano di Francesco di Pesello, entrovi una chaccia.’³¹ (‘in the [page 388]large ground‐floor room known as Lorenzo’s room are six paintings with gilded frames above the said spalliera and above the lettuccio,³² forty‐two braccia wide and three and a half high, three of them painted with the Rout of San Romano and one with battles and dragons and lions and one with the story of Paris, by the hand of Paolo Uccello, and one by the hand of Francesco di Pesello, within it a hunt’).

By 1598 the three battle scenes were framed, probably as a single unit, and had been moved to the passage approaching the chapel: an inventory of 1598 describes ‘3 quadri grandi di giostre antichi tutti in un pezzo con lor corniciette dorate, apicchati al muro altri sopra alla porta del primo salone, nell’andito della cappella’³³ (‘three large paintings of ancient jousts, all in a [single] piece, with their gilded frames, hung on the wall, others above the door to the first room, in the passage/ vestibule passage/vestibule of the chapel’).

The historical Battle of San Romano

The Battle of San Romano in the valley of the Arno was a minor skirmish that took place during the war against Lucca on 1 June 1432.³⁴ Florence’s war with Lucca and her allies Genoa, Milan and Siena, which lasted from 1429 to 1433, was over access to the port of Pisa. The leader of the victorious Florentines was Niccolò da Tolentino. The Sienese were led by Bernardino della Carda, who had recently defected from Florence. Niccolò was at some stage of the battle cut off from the rest of the Florentine troops, but he eventually won the day when Micheletto Attendolo da Cotignola came to his rescue. Peace was concluded a year later when Cosimo de’ Medici met with Visconti representatives in April 1433; Niccolò da Tolentino was accorded heroic status in June of that year, on the feast of Saint John the Baptist (patron saint of Florence), when Leonardo Bruni recited an oration in his praise and the Signoria gave him ‘un elmetto riccamente ornato ed il cavallo coverto di stragula veste purpurea deaurata’ (‘a richly ornamented helmet and a horse covered with a piece of [purple and gold] cloth and a purple and gold tabard’) and ‘il bastone in segno di pienissima autorità e obbedienza’ (‘a baton in sign of absolute authority and obedience’).³⁵ Niccolò subsequently fought in other conflicts, and died a prisoner in Milan on 20 March 1435; his body was brought back to Florence and buried in the cathedral on 14 April 1435.³⁶ That same year the Signoria planned a marble monument in the cathedral to honour him (although in the event the monument was in fresco).³⁷ In his fundamental study of 1970, Lionello Boccia summarised the political victory achieved by the Battle of San Romano, which in one fell swoop defeated the Lucchese, the Sienese and the Milanese and brought about peace.³⁸

The battle depicted

Battles are notoriously difficult to depict.³⁹ Although there are at least six published accounts of the Battle of San Romano and an eyewitness report by Maso degli Albizzi, no single text seems to have been followed here. Griffiths says that the narrative may be based on Matteo Palmieri’s Annales,⁴⁰ which describe vine, brambles, and men coming over the hill as in the Uffizi painting, while others suggest that it is based on hearsay.⁴¹ Petra Pertici has argued that the London painting follows the account of Maso degli Albizzi, and that the setting is topographically accurate as the battle took place in a long hollow with hills behind.⁴²

Uccello has here painted a bloodless contest⁴³ set against a background of oranges, roses (fig. 17) and pomegranates, which creates the decorative effect of a tapestry or fresco. The roses presumably indicate the month of June; the orange trees bear both blossom and fruit.⁴⁴ The pieces of broken lances have been arranged in perspective to form an extraordinary, fragmented grid‐like pattern, interspersed with ‘rugs’ of grass. To the left is a drastically foreshortened knight in armour lying on the curiously pale pink ground.

The main protagonists have been identified on the basis of heraldic emblems, although it has to be said that the heraldry does not seem to be very precise in its colours. In the London painting the focus is on Niccolò da Tolentino, who alone is seated on a white charger: he is identifiable by his personal armorial device of ‘Solomon’s knot’, here painted in black,⁴⁵ whereas in Andrea Castagno’s frescoed equestrian portrait of him it is painted in red.⁴⁶ The remains of an unidentifiable emblem, curtailed, are in a dark green. Niccolò’s baton and embroidered clothing have been said to represent those he was given at the laudatory oration.⁴⁷ Wegener points out that the classical pose of Niccolò da Tolentino and his horse represents the heroic exaltation of military virtue as extolled by Bruni, who reminded the Florentines that the Romans celebrated their heroes with equestrian statues.⁴⁸ It has been argued by Pietro Roccasecca – who disputes that the Paris painting shows the Battle of San Romano and argues that it shows instead the Battle of Anghiari of 1441, in which Micheletto Attendolo da Cottignola was the hero – that the knight on a grey horse just in front of Niccolò, with his visor closed, is Micheletto Attendolo, bearing the emblem of the ‘ondato’ of the Sforza, to whom he was related, although fighting for the Florentines.⁴⁹ Roccasecca is followed in this identification by Pertici. The arms on the shield lying on the ground beneath the enemy horseman on the grey horse have [page 389]been identified by Roccasecca as those of the Sienese Petrucci family, but with different colours; it is known that Antonio Petrucci took part in the battle and Pertici has confirmed the identification.⁵⁰ The white standard with a red cross is the standard of Florence.⁵¹

Micheletto Attendolo da Cotignola appears to have been shown twice. He has been identified in the Paris painting, barefaced like Niccolò da Tolentino, and is probably identifiable by his standard of black and white ‘ondato’ with a unicorn.⁵²

In the Florence painting an anonymous knight is being unhorsed; this incident has previously been called the unhorsing of Bernardino della Carda, but Roccasecca has argued that this knight merely represents the symbolic defeat of the enemy and that the title is a fiction, since Bernardino was not unhorsed but retreated from the battle.⁵³

Rather than depicting a chaotic milling of fighting knights, Uccello has organised the battle into focused blocks of manoeuvres. At the right‐hand side of the London painting he shows a classic field attack and defence – a manoeuvre contemporaries would have recognised from tourney. The knight on a grey‐white horse at the extreme right is parrying a three‐pronged attack: the knight on the dark grey horse has thrust his lance under the rondel which the grey‐white horsed knight wears at his left breast (an extra protection used in the 1430s), while another knight has thrust his sword under the rondel at the top, and yet a third is attacking with a sword, which is being fended off with a war hammer. In the Florence painting the dramatic unhorsing of a knight is at the centre of the action, and in the Paris painting four lances represent the action of a single lance being brought down. In the background of the London painting archers are spanning their crossbows, an action taking place in the foreground of the Paris painting.

The armour and its date

The depiction of the battle is extraordinarily splendid. All the knights are wearing full field armour, intended for war, but with overtones of tournament and parade armour. This combination is manifest in the figure of Niccolò da Tolentino: he is wearing a mail shirt, but without a steel cuirass over the mail, and he has no lance arrest, which shows that he is not intending to use a lance, and instead carries a baton of command. His helmet, a velvet‐covered barbuta, is carried by the page riding behind him, while he himself wears a magnificent damask hat with a large‐scale pomegranate pattern of a type introduced into Italy around 1425, with a matching giornea over the mail shirt.⁵⁴ On his arms he wears vambraces from the upper arm to the wrist, with a couter protecting his elbow, pauldrons on his shoulder, and a gauntlet protecting his right hand. His straight‐legged position on his horse, characteristic of the fifteenth century, is maintained by the saddle steel behind his thigh and by the long‐strapped stirrups. He wears a leg harness over the whole leg, consisting of a cuisse over the thigh with a rib at the top to deflect blows, a poleyn at the knee and a two‐part greave over the shin, and sabatons with spurs on his feet. His squire also wears vambraces, held in place with laces (called points), and a gilt mail shirt with a damask giornea matching that of his master. Implied but not shown are their left arm‐defences.

The knights are similarly dressed for battle, but with references to tournament armour. The crests on their helmets are presumably for identification, since crests were worn only in tournaments and would have been totally impractical in battle. The knight on the dark grey horse behind the squire wears full plate armour which is typical of the armour worn by other knights. His armour is the same as that of Niccolò da Tolentino except that he wears a steel cuirass over the breast and back, with the lance arrest clearly visible (just below his right shoulder) and a fauld with two lames around the thighs, with an early form of tasset (the semicircular piece just where the tip of the lance is) protecting the upper thigh; he has a helmet called an armet (of ‘sparrow‐beak’ form; see fig. 18) with the hinged visor up and with a wrapper (around the chin and neck). In all three paintings Uccello shows various views of armets, with the visor up or down, with and without a wrapper, and with a rondel (a small disc at the back of the neck).

Other aspects of the field armour, including details of straps, rivets, hinges, etc., are depicted from various angles: for example, in the knight on the black horse and in the knight towards the left of the picture, Uccello shows the upper and lower parts of the back plate, seen from the back, held together by the strap. In the knight lying on the ground he shows the two‐part cuisses from the back, with the bifurcated straps holding them together. The pieces lying on the ground are also carefully studied. In front of Niccolò is a sallet, and beyond that a pauldron (shoulderpiece) with a rib over the shoulder.

In general the armour in the Battle of San Romano is exceptionally accurately rendered, implying that Uccello had actual armour to copy in his workshop and fully understood how it functioned.

In his study of 1970 Boccia demonstrated that the depiction of the different types of armour in the three panels is historically accurate, and identified it as being of the type in use between 1430 and 1440.⁵⁵ Karen Watts has confirmed that the armour in all three paintings reflects armour used between 1430 and 1440, that the Paris painting shows armour which is contemporary with that of the other two paintings, and that all three paintings show armour that was out of date by the 1450s.⁵⁶

The patron and the earliest recorded location in 1480 in the Bartolini Salimbeni Palace

Because of the unbroken Medici provenance from 1492, discussion of the original date, location and iconography of the three Battle of San Romano paintings has hitherto been predicated on their having been commissioned by a member of the Medici family.⁵⁷ In a fundamental study, Wendy Wegener explored the relevance of the Luccan war in the rise of the Medici as rulers of the Republic of Florence, and the significance of the paintings as political propaganda. But it has always been difficult to explain precisely the motivation of the Medici in commissioning the series, particularly since the Battle of San Romano was one of the main reasons for their exile from Florence: in 1433 Cosimo and his cousin were exiled, having been charged with ‘inducing the people of Florence to enter into war with the Lucchese, which was almost the ruin not only of the Florentine Republic, but of the condition of Italy’.⁵⁸

However, recently Francesco Caglioti has published a document showing that the three paintings of the Battle of San Romano were not, in fact, commissioned by the Medici, but belonged originally to the Bartolini Salimbeni family, in whose possession they are first recorded in 1480.⁵⁹ In that year the paintings were in the camera grande of the town house of Lionardo di Bartolomeo Bartolini Salimbeni (1404–1479), situated between Via Porta Rossa and Corso degli Strozzi (now Via Monalda).⁶⁰ Lionardo was a leading member of the Florentine Government and, most importantly, provveditore (supervisor) of the Dieci di Balìa, the council of ten which conducted the war against Lucca.⁶¹ Cagliotti Caglioti suggests that Lionardo may have commissioned the paintings in 1438 when he took as a second wife Maddalena di Giovanni Baroncelli, who bore him six sons.⁶²

Appropriation by Lorenzo de’ Medici

In 1477 Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni bequeathed most of his possessions to his three youngest sons, Marco (1451–1480), Damiano (1453–1510) and Andrea (1455–1494), since he had already provided for his three eldest sons. But after Lionardo’s death on 28 June 1479 his will was contested, and in 1483 the arbitrators stipulated that Damiano and Andrea, who were by now the sole owners of their father’s house, their brother Marco having recently died, had to cede it to the other brothers and move to the family’s country villa, Villa Quinto (north‐west of Florence). Damiano took with him, along with the three paintings of the Battle of San Romano, several items of furniture from the camera grande, and wrote to his brother Andrea (who was still in Milan) itemising what he had removed to the Villa Quinto.⁶³ By 1492 the three paintings had become the property of Lorenzo de’ Medici, through an extraordinary sequence of events tracked by Cagliotti Caglioti as follows.

In 1492 the three paintings appear in the inventory of the Camera di Lorenzo in the Palazzo Medici (see above). In 1494 the Medici were expelled from Florence.

On 30 July 1495 Damiano appeared before the Sindaci responsible for administering the estate of the Medici after their exile, stating that the paintings had been forcibly removed from his possession by Lorenzo de’ Medici. Damiano claimed that he and his brother Andrea had jointly owned the three panels showing ‘La rotta della Torre a San Romano, or (sive) La rotta di Nicol Picino’.⁶⁴ Andrea, who was a financial agent of the Medici in Milan, had been persuaded by Lorenzo de’ Medici to give him, Lorenzo, his share of the paintings (1½!), but Damiano claimed that he had refused his own share. The paintings had been hanging in the country villa in Santa Maria a Quinto, from where Damiano had taken them to his town [page 391]house in Florence. From there they were removed by the woodworker Francione, who had been sent by Lorenzo to obtain them, against the wishes of Damiano. Cagliotti Caglioti deduced that the forced removal of the paintings must have been after 1479 (the paintings having passed into the ownership of Damiano and Andrea after the death of Lionardo in that year) and before 1486 (the date of Andrea’s return from Milan), and subsequently found archival evidence that the most likely date is 1484: Lorenzo the Magnificent had been involved in 1483 in the arbitration of the division of the inheritance of the five Bartolini brothers, which is probably when he first began to covet the paintings. In 1484 Andrea wrote from Milan to ascertain whether the transferral had taken place.⁶⁵

Date

The new documentary evidence of ownership presented by Cagliotti Caglioti does not solve the problem of when the series was commissioned, as the earliest record (1480) dates from after Uccello’s death (1475). However, it completes the process of detaching the dating of the series from linkage with the building of the Palazzo Medici, which had already been begun by a number of scholars for technical and stylistic reasons.

The three paintings of the Battle of San Romano have been dated variously between 1435 and 1460.⁶⁶ Until 1970 the tendency was for scholars to date the series late on the assumption that it had been commissioned for the new Palazzo Medici, as first proposed by Horne, who implied that Pesellino’s death in 1457 served as a terminus ante quem on the basis that six of the paintings in the Camera di Lorenzo (see p. 392) represented a single programme.⁶⁷ Mario Salmi and John Pope‐Hennessy linked them with the commission to Castagno for the equestrian figure of Niccolò da Tolentino in 1456,⁶⁸ and Sindona dated them just before Uccello’s Ashmolean Hunt and his Urbino predella of 1465–8.⁶⁹ An exception was Georg Pudelko, who stated that, were it not for Horne’s proposal, he would have dated the battle scenes early in Uccello’s career.⁷⁰

In 1970 Boccia’s findings about the date of the armour (discussed above) led him to suggest that the series had not originally been commissioned for the Camera di Lorenzo in the Palazzo Medici, but for the Casa Vecchia, and that the paintings had then been adapted for the new Palazzo Medici⁷¹ – the London and Florence scenes around 1435, and the Paris scene around 1440.⁷² Given that Boccia’s arguments could be regarded as providing merely an approximate date, some writers continued to date the series late. For example, Francis Ames‐Lewis dated it to the mid‐1450s for the new palace,⁷³ Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi to 1456,⁷⁴ Heydenreich to 1456–60,⁷⁵ Federico Zeri close to the Urbino predella and not before 1450,⁷⁶ and Griffiths to the 1450s.⁷⁷

However, most writers accepted Boccia’s date of c. 1435 (thus agreeing by implication that the series was planned for the Casa Vecchia). Those who accepted a date before the building of the new Medici palace included Alessandro Parronchi, who had formerly dated the series 1455–60, but now adjusted this to immediately after the Sir John Hawkwood monument for Florence cathedral of 1436; Parronchi thought that the series could have been completed by 1438, when Domenico Veneziano omitted Uccello’s name from those working for the Medici (although he suggested that this might have been out of rivalry).⁷⁸ Others were Carlo Volpe, who dated the paintings around 1440 and not later than 1443;⁷⁹ Andrea De Marchi, who dated them between 1435 and 1440;⁸⁰ Angelini, who dated them just before 1440;⁸¹ Anna Padoa Rizzo, who dated them c. 1440;⁸² and Maria Grazi e a Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto, who dated them before 1445.⁸³

One difficulty in dating the series is that the Paris painting differs in some features from the other two (some differences in technique are discussed above). Boccia noted that the bits of the horses are slimmer and more complicated than in the other two paintings, and the reins single rather than double; he characterised the Paris painting as altogether more mature, dating it around 1440.⁸⁴ Massimo Becattini and Maria Laura Cristiani Testi noted that the Paris painting is constructed according to different geometric principles and has a different viewpoint.⁸⁵ The fact that the pattern of Niccolò da Tolentino’s hat runs flatly over the surface in NG 583 despite Uccello’s implementation of single‐point perspective in the rest of the painting, while in the Paris scene the pattern of Micheletto’s hat is shown in perspective, has been commented on by J.N. O’Grady.⁸⁶ Paul Joannides pointed out that the figures in the Paris painting are on a larger scale, the background is different, and it is constructed according to a different perspective.⁸⁷ Volker Gebhardt argued on stylistic grounds that the Paris scene was painted first, soon after 1435, and the London and Florence panels painted in the early 1450s. However, Joannides disagreed, suggesting that the London and Florence panels had been painted c. 1432–3 and the Paris panel after the Sir John Hawkwood monument of 1436 but before the clockface of the Duomo, for which Uccello was paid in February and April 1443, and that therefore the entire set had been painted by Uccello by 1444.⁸⁸

Roccasecca agreed with an early dating of the London and Florence paintings and with the generally accepted sequence, but took the differences in the Paris painting noted by previous writers a step further.⁸⁹ He maintained that only the London and Uffizi paintings represented the Battle of San Romano and suggested that they were designed as a diptych or pendants around 1436, whereas the Paris painting had been painted separately some twenty years later, probably between 1456 and 1458, and showed the Battle of Anghiari. He saw the London and Florence paintings as an immediate response to Alberti’s Della Pittura, published in Latin in 1435 and in Italian in 1436. Roccasecca also argued that the Paris painting lacked any contextualisation, unlike the other two, which he considered echoed Matteo Palmieri’s account; that the London and Florence paintings derived from Lippo Vanni’s battle fresco in the Sala del Mappamondo in Siena, both in composition and colouring, and from the Stories of David in Ghiberti’s Baptistery reliefs;⁹⁰ and that the Paris painting is superfluous to the narrative and reflected the new alliance of the Sforza and the Medici after the Peace of Lodi, and was painted after the death of Micheletto da Cotignola in 1451.⁹¹ The latter argument is now weakened by the discovery of the Bartolini Salimbeni ownership.

The adaptation of the corners

Boccia’s argument that the series had not originally been commissioned for the Palazzo Medici was explored in greater detail by some subsequent writers. In 1988 Alessandro Conti observed that the corner additions were probably fifteenth‐century, rather than sixteenth‐century as suggested by Baldini, who had thought they were made when the panels were unified into the single unit described in the 1598 inventory. Conti considered that the corner additions were probably by Uccello himself, inserted in order to adapt the paintings for the Camera di Lorenzo, and that the paintings had originally been made for the Casa Vecchia.⁹² In 1989 Paul Joannides observed that the dimensions of the rectangular addition in the lower left‐hand corner of the Paris painting did not correspond to those of the doorway in the south‐east corner of the Camera di Lorenzo, that the composition allowed for an intrusion into the bottom left‐hand corner, and that the doorway would in no way have impinged on the composition: he therefore concluded that the paintings had not been made for the Camera di Lorenzo.⁹³ Gebhardt similarly argued that the corner additions were fifteenth‐century, and possibly by Uccello himself, and that no room in the Palazzo Medici would have required the paintings to finish in an arched shape; he likewise concluded that the paintings had been designed not for the Palazzo Medici but for the Casa Vecchia.⁹⁴

In view of Cagliotti Caglioti ’s discoveries, the likelihood is that the corner additions were made in 1484 when the paintings were moved from the Bartolini Salimbeni dwelling to the Camera di Lorenzo, their site in 1492.⁹⁵ Cagliotti Caglioti plausibly suggests that they were made by Francione, the woodworker who removed them in order to adapt them for the Camera di Lorenzo. This seems likely given the type of pure gypsum used for the corner additions, which is used most commonly by carpenters. The paintings had certainly been cut to their present height by 1492, when they are described as 3½ braccia high and the same height as the other three works by Uccello and Pesellino in the Camera.⁹⁶ The corner additions would have been necessary, if the paintings were to hang in a row, as seems likely, to regularise their shape after the truncating of the tops for aesthetic reasons, filling the unsightly gaps where they had originally been cut to accommodate corbels.⁹⁷

The Camera di Lorenzo

Where and how exactly the paintings were hung once they had been moved to the Camera di Lorenzo in the Palazzo Medici is not known. The ‘chamera grande terrena detta la chamera di Lorenzo’, their location in 1492, was correctly identified by W.A. Bulst, who charted the sequence of rooms according to the inventory of 1492: he published a ground plan of 1650 (fig. 20) showing the Camera as a room in the northern corner of the Medici Palace, looking out onto the garden.⁹⁸ Although the palace was substantially rebuilt by the Riccardi family in 1659, Büttner pointed out that the ground floor remains in essence unchanged.⁹⁹ The Camera di Lorenzo is a comparatively small room, with three bays on the east and west walls and two on the south and north. The vaults are supported by corbels of pietra serena carved with the armorial device of the Medici, three feathers in a ring (see under Lippi, NG 666). The wall measurements are recorded by Gebhardt, and with insignificant variations by Amonaci and Baldinotti: east wall 1,008 cm; north wall 758 cm; west wall (with windows onto the garden) 980 cm; south wall 753 cm; maximum height of the room 743 cm.¹⁰⁰ From the inventory of 1492 we know that the room contained a spalliera of 24 braccia (1,392 cm) in length, which included a cupboard with 2 usci 3¼ braccia (= 188 cm) high and a cassa 15 braccia (= 875 cm) wide, as well as a lettuccio 9¼ braccia (= 535 cm) wide and a lettiera.

Bulst placed the paintings along the east wall.¹⁰¹ In 1989 Joannides discussed the correct room as the Camera di Lorenzo (although without reference to Bulst), and he too positioned the paintings in a line along the east wall, after taking into account their height above the spalliera (which he estimated to have been 3½ braccia) and below the capitals of the Camera di Lorenzo.¹⁰² Gebhardt, using Bulst’s identification of the room,¹⁰³ also suggested the east wall in the Camera di Lorenzo as having accommodated the paintings, it being the best lit.¹⁰⁴ Amonaci and Baldinotti, who made a detailed survey of the room, also placed the paintings along the east wall,¹⁰⁵ but [page 393]pointed out that the panels could not have hung where they were placed by Gebhardt, since the maximum space between the corbels (315 cm) at the height he proposed (the tops reaching to 408 cm above the ground) would not have accommodated the full height of the paintings, and that they must have been hung slanting forward of the corbels. However, the crucial measurement – the height of the spalliera – is not given in the inventory.

Composition and sequence

Numerous studies have been made of Uccello’s use of one‐point perspective to organise the scenes. Parronchi’s study of the paintings in relation to the theory of perspective and optics appeared in 1957,¹⁰⁶ and in 1992 Becattini analysed the central vanishing point of NG 583 – level with that of the Uffizi painting – with a second vanishing point off to the right, leading the eye towards the Uffizi painting (fig. 21). He showed that the Paris scene is different from the other two not only in its main vanishing point, but also in introducing two others within the same composition and in having no landscape backdrop.¹⁰⁷ Cagliotti Caglioti suggested that the four scenes in grisaille seen by Vasari in Gualfonda (see above) might have been situated below the Battle of San Romano series when the paintings belonged to Lionardo.

The sequence in which the three paintings were originally intended to be viewed in Lionardo’s camera grande is uncertain. In 1981 Maria Laura Cristiani Testi saw them as describing three episodes of the Battle of San Romano in a triptych, bound together by geometric shapes in the costruzione legittima of Alberti, and reflecting the structure of a poetic canto; she placed the London and Florence paintings balancing each other on either side of the Paris painting, creating a geometric colour rhythm, and suggested that each one depicts a different moment of the day on which the eight‐hour battle was fought: dawn (the London painting), midday (the Paris painting), dusk (the Florence painting).¹⁰⁸

However, the most likely and generally accepted sequence is London, Florence, Paris. In this order not only are the London and Florence paintings linked across the corners by oranges among foliage and by their hilly landscape backgrounds – both features lacking in the Paris painting – but, more incontrovertibly, the corner cuts match up only in this sequence.

When Baldini first discussed the corner additions, he reconstructed the London and Florence panels as adjacent on one wall, with the Paris panel set at right angles. Although he had incorrectly identified the Camera di Lorenzo as the first room of the Museo Mediceo (see fig. 20),¹⁰⁹ the pattern of the irregular corbel shapes suggests that he was right to think that the three paintings were carpentered to fit around a corner, and indicates the sequence London, Florence, Paris: London and Florence on one wall with a wide mid‐wall corbel between them, and Paris at right angles, with a narrow corner corbel between Florence and Paris. This places the signature in the centre of one wall and explains its apparently curious position in the bottom left‐hand corner of the Florence painting.

This arrangement of the panels is somewhat perplexing, with the large corbel gap on the right of the Paris painting suggesting that it finished in the middle of a wall at the right. We know from the document of 1495 that there were then, and so had probably always been, only three paintings (the four paintings in grisaille belong in a different category). The anomaly can be explained if the Paris painting was an afterthought, a hypothesis consistent with the stylistic and compositional differences discussed above. However, Roccasecca’s argument that the Paris painting shows the Battle of Anghiari is now undermined by the description of the series in 1495 as representing the Battle of San Romano, with no mention of the Battle of Anghiari of 1441.¹¹⁰ Why the Paris picture might have been painted later remains unexplained.

Drawing

Few drawings attributable to Uccello survive. One of a knight in armour on horseback is undoubtedly the type of preparatory study he would have made for the battle scenes. Lorenza Melli sees the drawing of a horseman in the Uffizi (Gabinetto dei Disegni, 14502F; see p. 402, fig. 2) as preparatory for the knight behind Niccolò.¹¹¹ However, the coincidence of scale, although not of pose, to Saint George and the Dragon (NG 6294, see p. 399) might suggest that it was a study for a painting of a smaller scale or to memorise a type of armour and manoeuvre, rather than destined for a monumental figure.

Provenance

First recorded in the possession of the Bartolini Salimbeni family in 1480, from whom appropriated by Lorenzo de’ Medici before 1492, probably in 1484; recorded in the Medici Palace in 1492 and by the Codice Magliabechiano,¹¹² mentioned by Vasari (editions of 1550 and 1568),¹¹³ and in an inventory of 1598. Still in Medici possession in 1666, in the collection of Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici in the Casino.¹¹⁴ The three paintings remained in the Granducal Collection; the Uffizi painting was exhibited in 1784, and the other two were with the restorer Carlo Magni until 1787, when NG 583 and the Louvre painting were returned to the Guardaroba.¹¹⁵ NG 583 is stated to have been acquired in 1844 from the Giraldi Collection in Florence by the dealers Lombardi and Baldi,¹¹⁶ who certainly had it in 1848.¹¹⁷ Purchased with other pictures from Lombardi and Baldi in 1857.

Select Bibliography

• J. Pope‐Hennessy, The Complete Work of Paolo Uccello, London 1950, pp. 150–2; 2nd edn, 1969, pp. 18–21 and 152–3.
• L. Boccia, ‘Le armature di Paolo Uccello’, L’Arte, 11–12, 1970, pp. 55–133.
• A. Parronchi, Paolo Uccello, Bologna 1974, pp. 33–9, 91–2.
• G. Griffiths, ‘The Political Significance of Uccello’s “Battle of San Romano”’, JWCI , 41, 1978, pp. 313–16.
• R. Starn and L. Partridge, ‘Representing War in the Renaissance: The Shield of Paolo Uccello’, Representations, 5, 1984, pp. 32–64.
• P. Joannides, ‘Paolo Uccello’s Rout of San Romano: a new observation A New Observation ’, BM , 131, 1989, pp. 214–16.
• V. Gebhardt, Paolo Uccello’s ‘Schlachten von San Romano’, Bochumer Schriften zur Kunstgeschichte, Frankfurt, Bern, New York, Paris 1991.
• V. Gebhardt, ‘Some problems in the reconstruction of Uccello’s ‘Rout of San Romano’ cycle Problems in the Reconstruction of Uccello’s “Rout of San Romano” Cycle ’, BM , 133, 1991, pp. 179–85.
• A. Padoa Rizzo, Paolo Uccello. Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1991, cat. 9, pp. 66–81.
• W. Wegener, ‘“That the practice of arms is most excellent declare the statues of valiant men Practice of Arms Is Most Excellent Declare the Statues of Valiant Men ”: the Luccan War and Florentine political ideology in paintings The Luccan War and Florentine Political Ideology in Paintings by Uccello and Castagno’, Renaissance Studies, 7, no. 2, 1993, pp. 129–67.
• S. and F. Borsi, Paolo Uccello, Paris 1992, pp. 126–8, and cat. 14, pp. 308–12.
• A.M. Amonaci and A. Baldinotti, in L’architettura di Lorenzo il Magnifico, exh. cat., Florence 1992, pp. 126–8.
• P. Roccasecca, ‘Paolo Uccello: I dipinti di battaglia’, in Da Aristotele alla Cina. Sei Saggi di Storia dell’arte universale, Rome 1994, pp. 35–70.
• V. Gebhardt, Paolo Uccello. Die Schlacht von San Romano. Ein Bilderzyklus zum Ruhme der Medici, Frankfurt 1995.
• P. Roccasecca, Paolo Uccello. Le Battaglie, Milan 1997.
• F. Caglioti, Donatello e i Medici. Storia del David e della Giuditta, Florence 2000, pp. 265–81.
• A. Roy and D. Gordon, ‘Uccello’s Battle of San Romano’, NGTB , 22, 2001, pp. 4–17.
• F. Caglioti, ‘Nouveautés sur la Bataille de San Romano de Paolo Uccello’, Revue du Louvre, 4, 2001, pp. 37–54.

Notes