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Updated: August 11, 2024
With Andrea Sansovino, born in 1460, we come to the art of the sixteenth century, very noble and beautiful, at any rate in its beginning, but so soon to pass into a mere affectation. The pupil, according to Vasari, of Antonio Pollaiuolo, Sansovino's work is best seen in Rome.
As the latter gave all his attention to applying the laws of perspective to landscape and figures, so the efforts of Pollaiuolo were concentrated on giving freedom to the limbs.
Great anatomist though he was, Piero was not so ardent a lover of the Nude for its own sake as the Florentine, and the problems of movement have little interest for him, whereas in the most characteristic work of Pollaiuolo it is evident that the scenes are chosen to display the muscles in tense prominence, and the limbs in violent action or unusual posture.
The Christ is treated deliberately as a study of muscle, and is among the most ignominious of his types, and the fantastic landscape, with its shadowy rocks and solid clouds, is badly composed and without existence. Although there is no trace of the influence of Piero remaining, yet there is much of Antonio Pollaiuolo, especially in the muscular figure and bent legs of the Christ.
As we have seen, Luca's chief interest, like that of Pollaiuolo, lay in the effort to render movement of limb with facility, and therefore his attention was concentrated on the muscles and their action.
Crossing the large Tuscan room again, we come to a little narrow room filled with what are now called cabinet pictures: far too many to study properly, but comprising a benignant old man's head, No. 1167, which is sometimes called a Filippino Lippi and sometimes a Masaccio, a fragment of a fresco; a boy from the serene perfect hand of Perugino, No. 1217; two little panels by Fra Bartolommeo No. 1161 painted for a tabernacle to hold a Donatello relief and representing the Circumcision and Nativity, in colours, and at the back a pretty Annunciation in monochrome; No. 1235, on the opposite wall, a very sweet Mother and Child by the same artist; a Perseus liberating Andromeda, by Piero di Cosimo, No. 1312; two or three Lorenzo di Credis; two or three Alloris; a portrait of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, by Antonio Pollaiuolo; and three charming little scenes from the lives of S. John the Baptist and the Virgin, by Fra Angelico, which belong properly to the predella of an altar-piece that we saw in the first room we entered No. 1290, "The Coronation of the Virgin". No. 1162 has the gayest green dress in it imaginable.
The oldest is that on the southern side, upon which Pisano spent twenty-two years of his life, a most beautiful work representing, in twenty compartments, the life of St. John the Baptist. The frieze which runs round it was commenced nearly a century afterward by Ghiberti, and Pollaiuolo had much to do with its completion.
In the collection at Windsor is another chalk drawing "Hercules overcoming Antæus" of little merit either of anatomy or of technique, but which may possibly be from his hand. There is something of the influence of Antonio Pollaiuolo visible in this treatment of his favourite subject, and it is just conceivable that it may be an early study by Signorelli done in his workshop.
At this same time there was about to be built, by the advice of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, a most famous preacher of that day, the Great Council Chamber of the Palace of the Signoria in Florence; and for this opinions were taken from Leonardo da Vinci, Michelagnolo Buonarroti, although he was a mere lad, Giuliano da San Gallo, Baccio d' Agnolo, and Simone del Pollaiuolo, called Il Cronaca, who was the devoted friend and follower of Savonarola.
The best studies of the nude remaining to us by earlier painters, are the figures in "The Death of Adam," by Pier dei Franceschi, in his frescoes at Arezzo, the "Hercules overcoming Antæus," and "The Battle of the Nudes," by Antonio Pollaiuolo, in the Uffizi Gallery.
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