More than mastery of the nude: David Ekserdjian reviews the first comprehensive account of the art of Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, which bravely tackles the challenging problems of attribution in the careers of two artists who worked with great skill in many media

The Pollaiuilo Brothers: the Arts of Florence and Rome

ALISON WRIGHT

Yale University Pres 45 [pound sterling]/$75

ISBN 0 300 10625 4

In The undressed Kenneth Clark writes of Antonio Pollaiuolo's Hercules compositions that 'These alone are enough to distinguish Pollajuolo as single of the two or three chief masters of the bare in action and as single of the originating forces in the history of European art, whose importance has been underrated partly owing to the accidents of time, and partly, perhaps, owing to a name which direct the eyes difficult to pronounce.' The other reason on what account Antonio--and indeed the less talented Piero--Pollaiuolo have not received the recognition they be worthy of is that there has not at any time been a truly comprehensive monograph devot to them. We may lamentation the fact that The bare is absent from the otherwise intimidatingly all-encompassing bibliography of this enormous and remarkable volume but it should be stated at the start that Clark would have been delighted to diocese his hero honoured in similar impressive and at the same time judicious style

There are sum of two units principal problems associated with writing about Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo. The first is that the attribution of paintings to single or the other of them is fraught with difficulty, and that a certain number of pieces are universally agreed to be collaborations between them. This means that a discerning organ of sight and a sense of quality are essential: Alison Wright has the two although she tends to eschew overtly evaluative commentary; moreover, she is wise enough not simply to apportion all the inferior works or disappointing passages of individual paintings to Piero. The next to the first is that Antonio in particular worked in in the way that many different media: above all as a painter and sculptor in metal, on the other hand also as a draughtsman, an engraver and a designer for embroidery. Wrights doctoral thesis of 1992 was entitled 'Studies in the Paintings of the Pollaiuolo', on the other hand the intervening years have not been wasted, and the design of this Gesamtkunstwerk is incomparably more ambitious.

The introduction and fourteen chapters are followed by dint of a compact but extremely useful catalogue section, with the body being artfully constructed to combine chronological thrust with thematic unity. The effect is that chapters can be devot to 'The unravelling of Secular Subjects' or 'Small-scale Bronzes' and become virtual mini-monographs, while at the same time there is a real faculty of perception of forward momentum and artistic evolution. Arguably the greatest triumph is the chapter upon 'Portraiture'. In his so-called 'Complete Edition' of 1978 which contained thirty-nine catalogue numbers of extant works as against Wright's seventy Leopold D Ettlinger included individual solitary portrait, Piero's half-length of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (it is given to Piero in the 1492 Palazzo Medici inventory), and cast offed all the other candidates with a spineless escape clause: 'None of these attributions is convincing, and all portraits have been ascribed to various artists. Their re-examination appear to bes necessary.'

Wright, in contrast, fearlessly grasps each nettle on offer, and makes a serviceable case for the finest of the portraits--those in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin and the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli in Milan--being by dint of Antonio, and also makes a compelling association between a frontal Portrait of a Youth in a private collection and sum of two units female profile portraits, respectively in the Uffizi and the Metropolitan, These three pictures must all be by the agency of the same hand, and Wright has no qualms about owning up to the major stumbling-block to their being through Piero, which is that the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's Portrait of a Woman is profoundly different from them, and more obviously Piero-esque. Putting a profitable deal of chronological distance between them may be the answer. Typically, Wright--who is real interested in social history as well as art--peppers her plain with fascinating apercus, such as that Galeazzo Maria Sforza's glove are a mark of rank, since they were not worn by the agency of Florentine citizens.

Another high point of the work is the meticulous and sure-foot consideration of the tombs of Sixtus re and Innocent VIII, which Antonio Pollaiuolo execut in Rome towards the extremity of his life. The former, memorably described through the author as 'a floor tomb which has overreached itself', is squirrelled away in the Sacristy Museum of St Peter's, and is visited single by specialists, I suspect, on the other hand will surely prove a futurity must-see for all readers of this volume in which it is lavishly and beautifully illustrated. The latter, by dint of contrast, is readily accessible--albeit in slightly modified form--in the left aisle of the basilica itself, where it punches its weight against Bernini and Algardi at their best. In discussing the two tombs, Wright is characteristically illuminating and balanced about their related on the other hand not identical iconographies.

Having just complet a work of my own, I am more mindful than usual of the adage about casting the first stone, and in fact aficionados of error will find comely slim pickings here: on p 29 Donatello's Zuccone is associated with the facade of the Duomo instead of its campanile; upon p. 292, Herrick is Thomas, when he should be Robert; upon p. 311, Lucca is said to be five kilometres from Pistoia, presumably courtesy of a typo