ENGRAVING Although the most prestigious commissions in
15th-century Florence were for large-scale panel paintings and fres-
coes and for monumental statues and reliefs, some artists also pro-
duced important small-scale works, such as Pollaiuolo’s Hercules and
Antaeus(FIG. 21-14). Pollaiuolo also experimented with the new
medium of engraving, which Northern European artists had pio-
neered around the middle of the century. But whereas German
graphic artists, such as Martin Schongauer (FIG. 20-22), used cross
hatching that followed the forms, Italian engravers, such as Pol-
laiuolo, preferred parallel hatching. The former method was in keep-
ing with the general Northern European approach to art, which
tended to describe surfaces of forms rather than their underlying
structures, whereas the latter better suited the anatomical studies
that preoccupied Pollaiuolo and his Italian contemporaries.Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Ten Nudes (FIG. 21-29), like his
Hercules and Antaeus,reveals the artist’s interest in the realistic pre-
sentation of human figures in action. Earlier artists, such as Dona-
tello and Masaccio, had dealt effectively with the problem of ren-
dering human anatomy, but they usually depicted their figures at
rest or in restrained motion. As is evident in his engraving as well as
in his sculpture, Pollaiuolo took delight in showing violent action.
He conceived the body as a powerful machine and liked to display
its mechanisms, such as knotted muscles and taut sinews that acti-
vate the skeleton as ropes pull levers. To show this to best effect, Pol-
laiuolo developed a figure so lean and muscular that it appears
écorché (as if without skin), with strongly accentuated delineations
at the wrists, elbows, shoulders, and knees.Battle of the Ten Nudes
shows this figure type in a variety of poses and from numerousFlorence 56121-28Sandro Botticelli,
Birth of Venus,ca. 1484–1486.
Tempera on canvas, 5 9
9 2 . Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence.
Inspired by an Angelo
Poliziano poem and classical
statues of Aphrodite (FIG. 5-62),
Botticelli revived the theme of
the female nude in this elegant
and romantic representation
of Venus born of sea foam.21-29Antonio del Pollaiuolo,
Battle of the Ten Nudes,ca. 1465.
Engraving, 1 3 –^18 1 111 – 4 .
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York (bequest of Joseph
Pulitzer, 1917).
Pollaiuolo was fascinated by
how muscles and sinews activate
the human skeleton. He delighted
in showing nude figures in violent
action and from numerous fore-
shortened viewpoints.1 ft.
1 in.