Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello
Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello
The Duke of Milan led an alliance, and the Florentine army beat the Sienese army at the Battle of San Romano (Pisa) in 1432. This panel is one of three works that honor that alliance. While fighting is going on all around, Niccolò da Tolentino, who is in charge of the Florentine army, is seen using his lance to remove Bernardino della Carda from his position as leader of the other army. How the lances and crossbows moved—with the enemy forces moving back a little and the Florentine forces moving forward a little—shows how the battle will end. Nicholas da Tolentino led the Florentine forces in the painting now in the National Gallery in London. At the end of the story, Michelotto da Cotignola attacks with the Florentine army’s help in the panel now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The Uffizi panel is the most important part of this series. Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni, a well-known politician in Florence in the early 1400s, ordered the ornamental cycle for his home in Florence just a few years after the major work.
The panels were originally meant to be put between the arches of a room with a corbel arch over it. The tops were curved. After that, Lionardo Bartolini’s children and grandchildren sold the paintings to Lorenzo il Magnifico, who put them in his house on Via Larga, now called Palazzo Medici-Riccardi via Cavour. Lorenzo probably asked Paolo Uccello, a cycle painter, to change the arrangement. Uccello signed the panel in the bottom left corner, now at the Uffizi. In the corners of the flag, you can see the “mala medica,” or sour orange, the family emblem. Paolo Uccello used a lot of metal leaves to paint the armor and reins of the horses. This would have given the painting a lot of color in the past. Because of where the panels in Lionardo Bartolini’s house are placed, we can see that Uccello was a master of perspective because he made bodies that are too short, which makes it seem like we are looking at the scene from below.
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