{"id":23937,"date":"2025-01-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/areademo.beculture.it\/?p=23937"},"modified":"2024-12-15T20:23:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T19:23:11","slug":"battaglia-di-san-romano-paolo-uccello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/areademo.beculture.it\/en\/battaglia-di-san-romano-paolo-uccello\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battaglia di San Romano by Paolo Uccello, between geometry and bold perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It happens almost every day. Someone, while visiting the Uffizi<\/a>, finds themselves spellbound before the Battaglia di San Romano<\/em> by Paolo Uccello – not only because it\u2019s the first non-religious subject in the Galleria\u2019s display, but also for its strikingly unusual appearance<\/strong>. Its colors, composition, and style stand apart from everything around it. Indeed, it\u2019s one of the most accomplished works by that curious and singular personality that was Paolo Uccello. Driven by \u201cwhims\u201d and \u201coddities\u201d (as Vasari1<\/sup> says), he managed to unite mathematical precision with a sense of fantasy, narrating a real historical event through images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A triptych divided among three museums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before we delve into the composition itself, it\u2019s important to remember that La Battaglia di San Romano <\/em>at the Uffizi<\/a> is part of a series of paintings originally conceived as one unified work, but now split among three museums<\/strong>. The theme is the same, though each panel captures different moments: the battle\u2019s onset in the panel at London\u2019s National Gallery, the clash and the enemy\u2019s unseating in the Florentine panel, and the decisive intervention of allied troops in the panel at the Louvre in Paris.
A Medici inventory from 1492 lists the triptych as part of the bedroom furnishings of Lorenzo il Magnifico<\/strong> in today\u2019s Palazzo Medici-Riccardi on Via Cavour (then Via Larga) in Florence. For a long time, this led to the belief that Cosimo il Vecchio, Lorenzo\u2019s grandfather, commissioned the work to celebrate a contemporary military victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Battaglia di San Romano<\/em>, Paolo Uccello (London)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Battaglia di San Romano<\/em>, Paolo Uccello (Paris)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A recent discovery, however, has revised this plausible but incorrect hypothesis. A payment document from 1438 shows that Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni<\/strong>, a wealthy Florentine merchant who distinguished himself in battle, acquired the works. He likely hired Paolo Uccello for the very reasons once attributed to Cosimo.
Lorenzo il Magnifico, captivated by the panels\u2019 beauty, must have later obtained them from Salimbeni\u2019s heirs and moved them to his residence.\u00a0
This new understanding helps date the paintings (produced between 1435 and 1440<\/strong>) and explains the later additions – also by Uccello – to their upper sections. Initially curved, perhaps intended as lunettes, they were completed with extra painted segments. For the Uffizi panel, for example, orange trees were added on the left<\/strong>, a clear nod to the Medici (known at the time as mala medica<\/em>, or \u201cmedicinal fruit\u201d). This symbol, widespread in Medici patronage, also appears in Nascita di Venere<\/em> by Botticelli<\/a>.
But when did the depicted event take place and why was it so important?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subject: the clash between Florence and Siena<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rarely mentioned in standard history books, the Battaglia di San Romano played an important role in the political landscape of its time.<\/strong> We\u2019re in the era of the Signorie, and the feuds between guelfi (allied with the Pope) and ghibellini (backed by the Emperor). Florence, then a Republic, was defending its territories from the expansionist aims of the Visconti of Milan, who had long sought to conquer Tuscany to gain direct access to the sea.
In 1432 at San Romano, the Florentine army, led by the capable Niccol\u00f2 da Tolentino<\/strong>, clashed with the army from Siena (age-old rivals of Florence) and their allies from Lucca and Lucchese and Lombardy armies.\u00a0
It is this commander we see in the foreground of both the London panel – charging into battle on his white horse – and the Uffizi panel, dislodging another knight, Bernardino della Carda<\/strong>. Particularly despised by the Florentines for having first pledged support and then betrayed them, Bernardino\u2019s defeat at the center of Uccello\u2019s triptych represented not only a historic fact but also a source of pride at the expense of a treacherous enemy.
In the final panel, now in Paris, we recognize Micheletto Attendolo da Cotignola<\/strong>. His intervention proved decisive in securing Florence\u2019s victory when the Republic risked being overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Battaglia di San Romano<\/em>, Paolo Uccello (Florence)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Iconography and style of the Battaglia di San Romano at the Uffizi<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Set against a pastoral landscape, infantrymen and armored cavalrymen fight ferociously. Long, white, and red lances frame the scene, directing the viewer\u2019s gaze toward the painting\u2019s main vanishing point<\/strong>. In the center, a knight with a covered face (Bernardino della Carda) is struck in the chest, seemingly about to fall, as his horse rears up as if to fling him off. All around, a chaos of fallen horses, knights, faces, bodies, and weapons vividly conveys the turmoil of battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Led by four knights with lancia in resta<\/em>2<\/sup>, the group on the left (the Florentines, recognizable by their banner on the trumpet) appears to have the upper hand. On the right, the Sienese struggle: the angle of the lances and crossbows suggests their disadvantage. In the background, amidst plowed fields, a hunting scene<\/strong> unfolds with a splendid greyhound chasing hares – some interpret this as a metaphor for the battle itself. The artist\u2019s signature (Pauli Ugeli Opus<\/em>) can be read on a scroll emblazoned on a shield discarded at the lower left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mazzocchio, Paolo Uccello<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even today, traces of gold and silver leaf remain<\/strong>, hinting at how the horse harnesses and other armor details were once richly adorned. Yet what astonishes modern viewers most is the painting\u2019s strikingly modern feel<\/strong>, so unlike its contemporaries, and the artist\u2019s explicit fascination with perspective and geometric forms. Paolo Uccello employs a mathematical approach to explore multiple viewpoints<\/strong> and their effects, pushing representational and distortive experiments to extremes. This is evident in the dramatically foreshortened horse lying at the bottom, the prone knight on the right – mirroring and contrasting a figure in the London panel – and in the depiction of mazzocchi<\/strong>. These fashionable Florentine headdresses appear in both rigid forms (hexagonal or octagonal in section) and twisted versions. Uccello was deeply intrigued by them<\/strong>, as shown by a drawing preserved today at the Uffizi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coloring of the three panels also strays from convention, imbuing the Tuscan painter\u2019s work with a nearly fairy-tale quality. Unlike other Renaissance artists, Uccello did not probe the psychological depth of his figures; instead, he focused on what Vasari called \u201cmatters of perspective\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n