Hercules and the Hydra (Pollaiuolo)
The large originals
The originals were in a large room designed to impress visitors. They were 6
These were done around 1460, very early in Antonio's independent career, and must have loudly announced his arrival as a painter to Florence and beyond. They were perhaps commissioned by Piero di Cosimo de' Medici rather than his father, and were on cloth, still relatively unusual in Florence at this date.[5]
In 1494, Antonio Pollaiulo wrote a letter to Gentil Virginio Orsini from Rome, which was at the time in the grip of an outbreak of plague, asking to be allowed home to
Giorgio Vasari, the Florentine art historian praised the series of paintings, especially Hercules Slaying Antaeus – "In the Medici palace Antonio painted three Hercules scenes of five braccia (about six feet across). In one of them he strangles Antaeus, a most beautiful picture, in which one can really see Hercules's effort in the strangling – And no less care is used for Antaeus, who, held tight in the arms of Hercules, is seen to lose all strength and with open mouth give up the ghost."
They were mentioned again in Raffaello Borghini's Riposo of 1584 before vanishing from the documentary record.
They show the influence of the
The miniatures
Possibly produced for a private study, the two works now in the Uffizi are now generally thought to be copies after two of the works in the Labours set, done many years later, possibly for the Medici. One relates to Antonio's bronze sculpture
The two paintings in the Uffizi are first definitively recorded in a 1609 inventory of works in the Gondi household in Florence, by which time they had been joined together to form a diptych despite originally being separate works with different horizon lines. They were lost in 1943 during the Second World War but recovered in Los Angeles in 1963 by Rodolfo Siviero. They were restored in 1991.
Notes
- ^ "High resolution image from Google Art Project".
- ^ AA.VV., Galleria degli Uffizi, collana I Grandi Musei del Mondo, Roma 2003.
- ^ Wright, 78–86; Hartt, 313; Vasari. A Florentine braccio = 583 mm.
- ^ Clark, 180-181
- ^ Wright, 78–86; Vasari
- ^ In The Picture, Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 21 April 2002, p.74
- ^ andrewgrahamdixon
- ^ "Catalogue entry".
References
- Clark, Kenneth, The Nude, A Study in Ideal Form, orig. 1949, various edns, page refs from Pelican edn of 1960
- ISBN 0500235104
- "Vasari": Lives of the Artists.
- Wright, Alison, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome, 2005, Yale, ISBN 9780300106251, google books