Portrait of Galeazzo Maria Sforza

Piero del Pollaiuolo · 1471

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Piero del Pollaiuolo

Republic of Florence · 1443–1496

Piero del Pollaiuolo, whose birth name was Piero Benci, was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. His older brother, by about ten years, was the artist Antonio del Pollaiuolo and the two frequently collaborated. Their work shows both classical influences and an interest in human anatomy; according to Vasari, the brothers carried out dissections to improve their knowledge of the subject (although modern scholars tend to doubt this). Giorgio Vasari, who wrote several decades after both brothers were dead, includes a joint biography of Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Vasari says that Antonio was especially highly regarded for his disegno or drawing, and it may be that on shared works he did most of the underdrawing, leaving Piero and their assistants to complete the painting.

Independent artist guide by Momentable. Biography from Wikipedia; artworks credited to the museums that hold them.

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life: 1443–1496life
rights: Public domainrights

The work

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Works worth knowing

What Piero del Pollaiuolo made, and why each one is worth looking at.

How Piero del Pollaiuolo worked

From the record of their own practice.

The characterisation of his style inevitably depends on which paintings are attributed to him and his workshop. More than a century ago, Wilhelm Bode complained of Maud Cruttwell in her monograph on the brothers "it is hardly permissible for Miss Cruttwell to attribute whichever of the paintings pleases her best to Antonio and the rest to Piero". This was really directed at Bernard Berenson, who Bode saw as Cruttwell's mentor, who was especially critical of the few works and elements of works he allowed to Piero. He said in 1903 that the Coronation of the Virgin in San Gimignano was "a picture of unalloyed mediocrity, with scarcely a touch of charm to repay the absence of life and vigour".