Click on each title to browse Pollaiuolo Antonio Oil Painting.
We offer custom hand painted oil on canvas reproductions services.
Pollaiuolo, Antonio (c. 1431-1498).Early in his career Antonio Pollaiuolo distinguished himself as a goldsmith, sculptor, and painter. Together with his brother Piero, he designed and painted work commissioned by Florentine patrons, including the Medici family. The movement and motion human body intrigued Pollaiuolo throughout his career, and he was one of the first artists of the Renaissance to observe the structures of the human body directly from dissected cadavers. Capturing the movement of the body was his goal in every piece of art he produced, and therefore he acquired a broad and detailed understanding of its muscles, tendons, and skeletal structure. His Hercules and Antaeus, a large painting, was based on the battle between the two gods, which resulted in the death of Antaeus, and was painted on canvas to be used as a banner at a sporting event or festival. Pollaiuolo addressed the same subject matter in a small bronze statute years later. The small, tabletop sculpture broke with Renaissance tradition by combining a classical subject with complete nudity. What is most remarkable about the statue is the intensity of the struggle; the two gods are portrayed in the extremes of hand to hand combat, with straining sinews, and tortured faces. The energized composition departs from the flat work of the past, as it demands to be seen in the round. Pollaiuolo is thought to have created the small figures of Romulus and Remus which were added to the Capitoline Wolf, the symbol of Rome.