Battle of the Nudes (engraving)

The engraving is signed : OPVS ANTONII POLLAIOLI FLORENTINI ("the work of Antonio Pollaiuolo the Florentine") on a tablet at left.

As with Andrea Mantegna, the dominant Italian printmaker of the period, based mostly in Mantua, the suggestion has been made that Pollaiuolo may not have engraved the plate himself, but hired a specialist to work from his design.

[4] As with most famous prints of the period, a number of direct copies were made in engraving and woodcut,[5] including one by "Johannes of Frankfurt" in about 1490,[6] and it was often borrowed from and imitated, for example in a drawing probably by Raphael.

Mantegna made two large engravings of the Battle of the Sea-Gods, and he or his followers produced a number of others of male nudes fighting under various classical titles.

Despite the usual attempts by art historians, including in this case Erwin Panofsky, to identify a specific subject for the engraving, it is likely none was intended.

[9] Vasari wrote of Pollaiuolo: He had a more modern grasp of the nude than the masters who preceded him, and he dissected many bodies to study their anatomy; and he was the first to demonstrate the method of searching out the muscles, in order that they might have their due form and place in his figures; and of those ... he engraved a battle.On the other hand, it has been suggested that Leonardo da Vinci may have had Pollaiuolo partly in mind when he wrote that artists should not make their nudes wooden and without grace, so that they seem to look like a sack of nuts rather than the surface of a human being, or indeed a bundle of radishes rather than muscular nudes[10]A recent paper suggests that the image depicts a duel between two noblemen that has degenerated into a more widespread confrontation involving the lower classes.

[12] Recent inquiries into the meaning of the work also suggest that this remarkable battle scene had impacted artists even after Mantegna.

[18] Although most art historians have dated the work to the period 1465–1475, in 1984 the suggestion was made that the print draws directly from a Roman sculpture known to have been excavated in Rome in 1489, Three Satyrs strangled by a Serpent (now Graz, Austria).