1940.9: Fighting Nudes

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1940.9

People

Antonio Pollaiuolo, Italian (Florence, Italy 1431 or 1432 - 1498 Rome, Italy)

Title

Fighting Nudes

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

15th century

Places

Creation Place: Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Florence

Culture

Italian

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/297789

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Brown ink and brown wash on cream antique laid paper, extensively restored, laid down overall to brown craft paper

Dimensions

27.3 x 18.1 cm (10 3/4 x 7 1/8 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• watermark: No watermark was observed when examined by Craigen Bowen, 3/4/2002.
• inscription: bottom edge of mount, brown ink: Antonio Pollaiolo Fiorentino 1426-1498 He invented & graved ye. 1st [?]: print 1440
  50
  from vol 1st No 2
  [Parts of the inscription are hard to read]
• inscription: verso of mount, brown ink: P. 60. [written upside down]
• inscription: u.r. corner of mount, graphite: R [or possibly K] 2 [written upside down]

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Jonathan Richardson, Sr., London, England. Bishop Benson. Sir John Gott, Bishop of Truro, Cornwall, England. Reginald Herbert, The Earl of Pembroke, Wilton House, Salisbury, England, sold [through Sotheby's, London, July 7, 1917, lot 343]; to [Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, NY], sold; to Paul J. Sachs, Cambridge, MA, July 15, 1919, gift; to Fogg Art Museum, 1940.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Meta and Paul J. Sachs

Accession Year

1940

Object Number

1940.9

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

• S. Arthur Strong, Reproductions in Facsimile of Drawings by the Old Masters in the Collection of the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery at Wilton House, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd. (London, England, 1900), Part II, cat. no. 17, n.p., repr. pl. 17 in color
• Maud Cruttwell, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Duckworth & Co. and Charles Scribner's Sons (London, England and New York, NY, 1907), pp. 76-77
• Fern Rusk Shapley, "A Student of Ancient Ceramics, Antonio Pollajuolo", The Art Bulletin, Brown University (Providence, RI, December 1919), vol. II, no. 2, pp. 78-86, p. 85, repr. pl. VIII
• Tancred Borenius, Four Early Italian Engravers: Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Andrea Mantegna, Jacopo de' Barbari, Giulio Campagnola, The Medici Society Ltd. (London, England and Boston, MA, 1923), p. 9, repr.
• Alfred H. Barr, Jr., "A Drawing by Antonio Pollaiuolo", Art Studies: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1926), vol. 4, pp. 73-78, pp. 73-77, repr. fig. 1
• Margaret E. Gilman, "Antonio Pollaiuolo as Represented at Yale and Harvard", The Yale Alumni Weekly (New Haven, CT, March 13, 1928), vol. XXXVII, no. 27, p. 748, repr.
• Robert Allerton Parker, "The Key to Antonio Pollaiuolo's Genius", The International Studio (1929), vol. LXXXIX, no. 368, pp. 39-44, 92, pp. 43-44, repr.
• Exhibition of Italian Art, 1200-1900, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts (London, England, 1930), cat. no. 444, p. 240
• Lord Balniel and Kenneth Clark, ed., A Commemorative Catalogue of the Exhibition of Italian Art held in the Galleries of the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, January - March 1930, exh. cat. (London, 1931), cat. no. 635
• Arthur E. Popham, Italian Drawings Exhibited at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, 1930, Oxford University Press (NY) (London, England, 1931), cat. no. 33, p. 10, pl. XXVIII
• "Rare Drawings in Fine Exhibit Held in Buffalo", Art News (New York, NY, December 29, 1934), vol. XXXIII, no. 13, pp.3-4 and 13, p. 4, repr.
• Master Drawings, Selected from the Museums and Private Collections of America, exh. cat., Buffalo Fine Arts Academy/Albright Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY, 1935), cat. no. 8, n.p., repr. [also mentioned in the catalogue introduction, n.p.]
• An Exhibition of European Art 1450-1500, Presented by the Rockefeller Foundation Interns of the Brooklyn Museum", exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY, 1936), cat. no. 124, n.p., repr. pl. 124
• Arthur Mayger Hind, Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue with Complete Reproduction of all the Prints Described, Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (London, England, 1938), pp. 192-3 (under cat. no. D. I. 2)
• Bernard Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL, 1938), vol. II, no. 1898C, p. 265, repr. fig. 77
• Alfred M. Frankfurter, "Master Drawings of the Renaissance: Notable and New Items in American Collections", ARTnews Annual (New York, NY, 1939), vol. XXXVII, no. 22, pp. 97-116, 180-185, p. 181, repr. fig. 7
• Classics of the Nude: Loan Exhibition--Pollaiuolo to Picasso, exh. cat., Knoedler & Co. Inc. (New York, NY, 1939), cat. no. 1, pp. 9-10, repr. pl. 1
• Carol Rothschild, "Recent Museum Acquisitions", Parnassus, College Art Association of America (May 1940), Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 46-50, 56, p. 48
• Agnes Mongan and Paul J. Sachs, Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, 1940), vol. 1, cat. no. 37, pp. 30-34; vol. 2, repr. fig. 33
• Giovanni Colacicchi, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Chessa Editeur (Florence, Italy, 1943), cat. no. 76, pp. XXXIII-IV, repr. pl. 76
• Attilio Sabatini, Antonio e Piero del Pollaiolo, Casa Editrice G. C. Sansoni (Florence, Italy, 1944), pp. 37 and 86-87, repr. pl. XXIIIa
• "New Edition of a Catalogue: Drawings in the Fogg Museum", The Connoisseur in America (New York, NY, October 1947), vol. XXX, pp. 39-40, p. 39, repr.
• Hans Tietze, European Master Drawings in the United States, J. J. Augustin, Inc. (New York, 1947), cat. no. 12, pp. 24-25, repr.
• Helen Comstock, Review of "Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art", The Connoisseur (September 1947), vol. CXX, pp. 39-40, pp. 39-40, repr.
• Sergio Ortolani, Il Pollaiuolo, Ulrico Hoepli-Editore (Milan, Italy, 1948), cat. no. 2, p. 168 and pp. 205-6, repr. pl. 84
• Agnes Mongan, "The Fogg Art Museum's Collection of Drawings", Harvard Library Bulletin, Harvard University (Cambridge, 1958), vol. 3, no. 2, March, pp. 5-9, p. 200
• Review of "Watercolors by Edward Hopper", Bulletin of the Currier Gallery of Art, Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, NH, 1959)
• Winslow Ames, Great Drawings of All Time [vol. 1: Italian], ed. Ira Moskowitz, Shorewood Publishers Inc. (New York, 1962), cat. no. 114, n.p., repr. color
• Winslow Ames, Drawings of the Masters: Italian Drawings from the 15th to the 19th Century, Shorewood Publishers Inc. (New York, 1963), p. 21, repr. pl. 12 in color
• Agnes Mongan, Memorial Exhibition: Works of Art from the Collection of Paul J. Sachs [1878-1965]: given and bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, exh. cat., Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 1965), no. 3, repr
• Alberto Busignani, Pollaiolo, Edizioni d'Arte Il Fiorino (Florence, Italy, 1969), cat. no. XCIV, n.p., repr.
• Leopold D. Ettlinger, Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo: Complete Edition with a Critical Catalogue, Phaidon (London, England, 1978), cat. no. 36, p. 161, repr. pl. 74
• Konrad Oberhuber, European Master Drawings of Six Centuries from the Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, exh. cat., National Museum of Western Art (Tokyo, 1979), cat. no. 2, n.p., pl. 2, repr.
• Beverly Louise Brown, Prints and Drawings of the Quattrocento, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1981), cat. no. 24, p. 20
• Kristin A. Mortimer and William G. Klingelhofer, Harvard University Art Museums: A Guide to the Collections, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press (Cambridge and New York, 1986), cat. no. 249, p.216, repr.
• Agnes Mongan, Konrad Oberhuber, and Jonathan Bober, The Famous Italian Drawings at the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Silvana Editoriale (Milan, Italy, 1988), pp. 9, 10 and 24, repr. fig. 3
• Jay A. Levenson, ed., Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press (Washington, D.C. and New Haven, CT, 1991), under cat. no. 160, p. 261 [catalogue entry written by Martin Kemp]
• Bernice Davidson, Italian Art at the Close of the Quattrocento: Pollaiuolo and Hercules: Painting and Sculpture in the Frick Collection from the Age of Piero della Francesca, exh. cat., The Frick Collection (New York, NY, 1992), cat. no. 5, n.p., repr.
• Alison Wright, “Mantegna and Pollaiuolo: Artistic Personality and the Marketing of Invention”, Drawing, 1400-1600: Invention and Innovation, ed. Stuart Currie, Ashgate Publishing (Aldershot, England and Brookfield, VT, 1998), pp. 72-90, pp. 79-80 and 82, repr. fig. 5.5
• Patricia Lee Rubin and Alison Wright, Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, exh. cat., National Gallery Publications/Yale University Press (London, England, 1999), cat. no. 56, pp. 264-5, repr. color and pp. 259, 263 and 267
• Carl Brandon Strehlke, Review of "Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s", The Burlington Magazine (January 2000), vol. CXLII, no. 1162, pp. 46-8, p. 47, repr. fig. 63
• Federico Poletti, Antonio e Piero Pollaiuolo, Silvana Editoriale (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2001), pp. 82-83, repr. p. 83 (color)
• Shelley Langdale, Battle of the Nudes. Pollaiuolo's Renaissance Masterpiece, exh. cat., Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH, 2002), checklist no. 13 and pp. 38, 45-6, 58 (n. 28), 60 (n. 55), repr. pl. 13 (color)

Exhibition History

• Exhibition of Italian Art, 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 01/01/1930 - 03/08/1930
• Master Drawings, Selected from the Museums and Private Collections of America, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, 01/01/1935 - 01/31/1935
• An Exhibition of European Art 1450-1500, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, 05/08/1936 - 06/08/1936
• Drawings from the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University (Collected by Paul J. Sachs), Century Club, New York, 05/12/1947 - 09/25/1947
• Memorial Exhibition: Works of Art from the Collection of Paul J. Sachs [1878-1965] Given and Bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 11/15/1965 - 01/15/1966; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 12/19/1966 - 02/26/1967
• European Master Drawing of Six Centuries from the Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 11/03/1979 - 12/16/1979
• Prints and Drawings of the Quattrocento, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 07/03/1981 - 08/31/1981
• Italian Art at the Close of the Quattrocento: Pollaiuolo and Hercules: Painting and Sculpture in The Frick Collection from the Age of Piero della Francesca, The Frick Collection, New York, 02/04/1992 - 03/29/1992
• Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, National Gallery, London, 10/20/1999 - 01/16/2000
• Landmarks of World Art and Architecture, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/04/2012 - 01/19/2013
• 32Q: 2540 Renaissance, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/01/2016 - 01/31/2017

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