Fig. 108. Antonio Pollaiuolo. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian.—London.
Of course some painters declined to keep holiday and feverishly pursued the lines of realistic investigation laid down by Castagno and his contemporaries. The most notable of these is Antonio Pollaiuolo.[[41]] He was trained in sculpture under Ghiberti, and worked most variously, at sculpture, painting, engraving, glass designing, and even embroiderers’ patterns. Everywhere he pursued with an almost ferocious intensity the secrets of anatomy and especially of the human body in violent action. He conceived the body as a powerful machine and rejoiced to display its mechanisms—knotted muscles, straining sinews. He chose his subjects with this sort of display in mind: Hercules and his feats, the archers setting their bows and crossbows for the slaying of St. Sebastian, nude men in deadly combat with dirks and axes, nude men wildly dancing. Nearly all these works suffer from their avowed experimentalism, but all are alive with a tingling not to say brutal energy. Antonio Pollaiuolo is the ancestor of all the strong painters who for over four centuries have delighted to appal the mild and sheeplike throng with wolfish antics. He is the first artist who is a specialist, pursuing his own ends in disregard of the surrounding public. As a matter of fact, Antonio’s muscular paganism fitted in fairly well with the notions of a Florence that worshipped power. The Medici ordered the twelve feats of Hercules for their palace, about the year 1460. The great pictures are lost, but little copies by Antonio himself give an idea of their truculent force. In the Uffizi are Hercules crushing the breath out of the earthborn demigod Antæus, and Hercules slaying the Hydra. The tension, ardor, and ferocity of these tiny pictures are extraordinary. They seem to enhance our own physical life. At New Haven is the panel of Hercules shooting the Centaur Nessus, who races across a ford with Deinaira on his back. The background is an exact picture of the Arno valley looking from the west towards Florence. The representation of the run of the river is extraordinary. Pollaiuolo had adopted Domenico Veneziano’s miniature conception of landscape, but has introduced swing and motion.
Equally remarkable is the Arno landscape in the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, Figure [108], which was painted in 1475. It has the defects of an experimental and academic performance, is a show piece. The executioners are even repeated, to show both front and rear aspects. All the same, its power is impressive and beyond the range of any artist then living, with the possible exception of Piero della Francesca. In painting Pollaiuolo’s accomplishment is so even, and in draped figures so ugly, that we may well pass the series of Virtues which with his brother Piero he did in 1469 for the Mercantile Court, and consider his great engraving known as the Ten Nudes, Figure [109], the odd decorative disposition of which is imitated by Botticelli in the Allegory of Spring; and the fresco of Dancing Men, in which Pollaiuolo successfully vies with the convivial and Bacchic themes of the Greek vase painters. The group is odd and effective as pattern, and inspired by a joyous energy.
Painting only claimed a fraction of Antonio’s effort; often he merely made the sketch and left the execution to his rather tame brother, Piero. At the end of his life he was called down to Rome to make the bronze tomb for Sixtus IV. There he died in the year 1498, being sixty-three years old. While his own achievement was somewhat cramped and limited, he had made the most valuable contributions to the art, or rather to the science of painting. He had inspired a titan like Signorelli and a poet like Botticelli, and in certain aspects Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo only continued and perfected his work. As late as Benvenuto Cellini’s day his sketches were passed about the studios for the instruction of young painters in anatomy.
Fig. 109. Antonio Pollaiuolo. Fighting Men—“The Ten Nudes.” Engraving.
A kindred strenuous spirit, Piero della Francesca,[[42]] affords an interesting contrast to Pollaiuolo. Though an Umbrian, he belongs spiritually to Florence. For Piero the world was a frozen thing. He investigated with utmost zeal the mathematical basis of perspective, producing on that topic a laborious and quite unreadable book. He studied anatomy and construction in light and dark, and all the atmospheric problems therewith associated. To attain atmospheric envelopment, he sacrificed color. His pictures exist in silvery grays, suggesting the blondness and tonal unity of modern open-air painting. The drama of life never engrossed him. His world is passionless and almost motionless, coldly impressive. Although he practiced all refinements of modelling, he never made those relaxations of contour which suggest movement. His figures are finely constructed and beautifully placed but emotionally unrelated. They merely exist rather splendidly, as do some of Manet’s figures. Indeed the warning of George Moore as regards Manet applies equally to Piero. It is futile to seek from him anything but fine painting.
Fig. 110. Piero della Francesca. The Resurrection.—Borgo S. Sepolcro.
Of his origins we know next to nothing. He was born about 1410 in the Umbrian town of Borgo San Sepolcro. For several years after 1439 we find him at Florence as a paid assistant of Domenico Veneziano, whose pale tonalities and topographically minute landscape reappear throughout Piero’s work. His austere power is best represented in the bleak Resurrection, Figure [110], which he painted in 1460 for his native city. The stalwart Conqueror of Death has an apparitional impressiveness. He comes with power from beyond the grave. He dominates the world as represented by the sleeping athletes of the guard. A most potent effect is obtained without sacrifice to sentiment. There is a similar detachment in the Baptism of Christ, in the National Gallery, London. Its pearly loveliness of color is in odd contrast to its evasions of anything like warmth or tenderness. It is less an event than a magnificently posed scene. The landscape is a liberating and informal feature, a skilful adaptation of the method of Domenico Veneziano and Pollaiuolo. It is as crisp and calculated as a Japanese print, yet it gives its effect of space and breadth.