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What interesting fact did you find out today year 3 and 4?

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The Battle of San Romano was fought on June 1, 1432, in San Romano, some 30 miles outside Florence, between the troops of Florence, commanded by Niccolò da Tolentino, and Siena, under Francesco Piccinino. The outcome is generally considered favourable to the Florentines, but in the Sienese chronicles it was considered a victory. As the 1430s began Florence had found itself in conflict with the rival city state of Lucca, and her allies, Siena and Milan.

The Florentine deployed about 4,000 horse and 2,000 infantry. The clash, which lasted for some six or seven hours, consisted of a series of heavy cavalry fights. It was decided by the intervention of a second cavalry corps commanded by Micheletto Attendolo.

The battle was depicted in three large paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist, Paolo Uccello: The Battle of San Romano. Today the three panels are separated and located in galleries in London, Paris, and Florence:

Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano (probably about 1438-1440), egg tempera with walnut oil and linseed oil on poplar, 182 x 320 cm, National Gallery, London.

Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino unseats Bernardino della Ciarda at the Battle of San Romano (dating uncertain, about 1435 to 1455), tempera on wood, 182 x 320 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The Counterattack of Michelotto da Cotignola at the Battle of San Romano (about 1455), wood panel, 182 x 317 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume 1, by ^ Dillian Gordon, 2003, pp. 378-397 ISBN 1-85709-293-7

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The Battle of San Romano was fought on June 1, 1432, in San Romano, some 30 miles outside Florence, between the troops of Florence, commanded by Niccolò da Tolentino, and Siena, under Francesco Piccinino. The outcome is generally considered favourable to the Florentines, but in the Sienese chronicles it was considered a victory.

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A very useful website, full of information on the battle

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TripImprover - Get More out of Your Museum Visits!

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Where? Room 54 of the National Gallery
When? Between 1435 and 1460. The dating of this painting has been the subject of much debate, but most critics believe it is painted between 1435 and 1440.
Commissioned by? Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni, a rich Florentine man who had a strong commercial interest in the battle of San Romano.

What do you see? This painting shows a scene from the battle of San Romano on June 1, 1432. This battle was fought between the Republic of and the Republic of Lucca with its allies. The person in the middle with the big red and gold hat (instead of a helmet) is Niccolò da Tolentino, a Florentine general. His white horse is standing on its back feet, and Niccoló is attacking the soldier from the opposing army on the grey horse on the right. Niccoló holds a short stick in his right hand, which identifies him as a general.

​To the left of Niccoló, you can see a boy with blond hair who is holding Niccoló's banner, which is decorated with 'knots of Solomon" symbols. The battlefield is bounded by a thick layer of vegetation with growing oranges, pomegranates, and flowers. Behind the vegetation is the hilly Tuscan landscape with several soldiers spread around.

The main feature of this painting may not be the battle, but the linear perspective that Uccello included in this painting through the arrangement of the lances, flags, and knights in the foreground. Look specifically at all the broken lances in the foreground which are arranged in such a way that the vertical lances all point in the direction of a single vanishing point at the top of the head of the white horse.

Uccello was one of the first artists to introduce linear perspective to painting. This means that the lances, flags, people, etc. are portrayed in proper perspective. For example, the warrior on the white horse in the center is supposed to be equally tall as the dead warrior laying on the ground to the left of him (though it may not appear to be the case according to most viewers).

Backstory: The battle of San Romano (a small place in , near Lucca) was part of the war between the Republic of and the Republic of Lucca with its allies from Genoa, , and Siena. An important element of the war was about who would get access to the port of Pisa for trade.

The battle of San Romano took place on June 1, 1432, and lasted less than a day. This battle was only a relatively minor battle, but the Florentines remembered it as a turning point in the war. This painting commemorates the Florentine victory in this battle, though Sienese sources disagree with this conclusion.

The battle started by Florentine general Niccoló Tolentino being attacked after he was separated from most of his army when he was exploring the area. Tolentino and his small group of soldiers fought a brave fight and did not give up until another Florentine general, Micheletto Attendolo (who is at the center of the Louvre version of this battle), arrived at the battle scene with reinforcements. Attendolo and his army helped Florence to win this battle. The war dragged on for another year without a clear winner, and in the end, the war was settled through negotiations.
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Other versions of this painting? This painting is a part of a triptych (a work of art divided into three parts) made by . The three paintings represent different moments in the battle of San Romano. There are two alternative explanations about the order of the paintings. The simple explanation is that the three paintings represent the morning of the fight (the current version), the afternoon (the Uffizi version), and the evening (the Louvre version).

A more popular alternative is that the current version represents the beginning of the battle with Niccoló da Tolentino. The Louvre version represents the arrival of Micheletto Attendolo and his army. The Uffizi version shows the last episode where Bernardino della Ciarda from the opposing army has been unhorsed. In both explanations, the current version of the painting will represent the painting on the left of the original triptych.

, Brunelleschi, and Masaccio. He was named Uccello, which is Italian for 'bird', because he liked to paint birds. He developed strong scientific interests and was very interested in representing perspective in paintings, something that he and contemporary artists just introduced to painting. The appropriate use of linear perspective was often more important for Uccello than what the painting should represent.Linear perspective was developed around 1420 by Brunelleschi. It was a completely new approach to represent space in paintings. The simplest idea of perspective is that the size of objects becomes smaller, the further away they are from the observer. Paintings with perspective have one or multiple vanishing points which help the painter to create perspective. Who is Uccello? Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) was born as Paolo di Dono in Pratovecchio in Tuscany. In his teenage years, he was an apprentice of Lorenzo Ghiberti and later he got influenced by contemporaries such as

​In his paintings, he combines elements from the older Gothic tradition (the decorative parts) and the newer Renaissance movement (which introduced depth and perspective). The current painting is a good example of the combination of styles. The use of perspective represents the Renaissance component, while the Gothic component is visible in the attention Uccello paid to the details of the armors and all the patterns in this painting.
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Foreshortening is a specific form of perspective in which an illusionary trick is used to provide the idea of depth. A great example is when someone wants to paint a picture of a person laying with his feet towards you. To create the idea of depth, the painter will paint the feet of the person bigger than his head.

The Lamentation of Christ by Mantegna is a great example of foreshortening. Note that the linear perspective in Linear Perspective? paintings is definitely not perfect, but it did help to create depth in two-dimensional paintings. His work served as an inspiration for many artists in the next generations who perfected his ideas about linear perspective in paintings.

Fun fact: You can see ten soldiers scattered across the rolling hills in the background. Seven of them are dressed in clown-like, colorful pants and seem to perform various training tasks. Three of them are archers and hold crossbows in their hands. You can see two of them loading the crossbow with their feet as that was a physically demanding job. Two other soldiers on horses are standing across the road. Some people say that these soldiers are sent from the battlefield by Niccoló da Tolentino to ask for backup, though they do not seem to be in a big hurry.

Written by Eelco Kappe

References:

Kemp, Martin and Antonio Criminisi (2005), "Paolo Uccello's 'Rout of San Romano': Order from Chaos," New Magazine, January, 84-89.

Smithers, David (1980), "Floreat Bibliomania," British Medical Journal, January 12, 99-100.

Wegener, W. J. (1993), "That the practice of arms is most excellent declare the statues of valiant men': the Luccan War and Florentine political ideology in paintings by Uccello and Castagno," Renaissance Studies, 7(2), 129-165.

www.khanacademy.org/humanities/renaissance-reformation/early-renaissance1/painting-in-florence/v/paolo-uccello-battle-of-san-romano-c-1538-40

www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/battle-san-romano

www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paolo-uccello-the-battle-of-san-romano

www.nationalgallery.org.uk/upload/rtf/roy_gordon2001.rtf

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1600265/pdf/brmedj00002-0039.pdf

​www.uffizi.org/artworks/the-battle-of-san-romano-by-paolo-uccello/

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The Battle of San Romano by Uccello in the National Gallery

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Where? Room 54 of the National Gallery When? Between 1435 and 1460. The dating of this painting has been the subject of much debate, but most critics believe it is painted between 1435 and 1440. Commissioned by? Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni, a rich Florentine man who had a strong commercial interest in the battle of San Romano.

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This website has lot of writing. This one is slightly trickier to understand.

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This panel is part of a cycle of three paintings that celebrate the victory of the Florentine forces over the Sienese troops and the alliance guided by the Duke of Milan at the battle of San Romano (Pisa) in 1432. Niccolò da Tolentino, at the head of the Florentine army, is shown as he unseats Bernardino della Carda, the head of the adversary troops, with his lance while the battle is raging all around. The direction of the lances and crossbows, with those of the Florentine forces slightly angled forwards and those of the adversaries slightly set back, foreshadows the outcome of the battle. The Uffizi panel is the central episode of the narrative sequence that begins with Niccolò da Tolentino leading the Florentine forces, in the painting now at the National Gallery in London, and concluding with the Attack of Michelotto da Cotignola, ally of the Florentines army, illustrated on the panel now at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The decorative cycle was commissioned by Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni, leading light in Florentine political life from the early 15th century, for his palace in Florence, just a few years after the epic feat itself. Originally the panels had an arched top, to be inserted between the arches of a room covered with a corbel arch. The heirs of Lionardo Bartolini then sold the paintings to Lorenzo il Magnifico, who had them placed in his palace in via Larga (now known as Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in via Cavour) probably asking Paolo Uccello, the painter of the cycle, to change the shape, as he did by signing the panel that is now at the Uffizi, in the bottom left. The integrations in the corners show the depiction of orange leaves, the "mala medica" or sour orange, that was the emblem of the Medici family. To show the armour and the bridles on the horses, Paolo Uccello used a rather large amount of metal leaf, which in the past would have given the painting a rich, wealth of colours. Uccello was a virtuoso in perspective, and he shows this in the construction of foreshortened bodies that allow us to assume a viewpoint from the bottom, due to the position of the panels in the palace belonging to Lionardo Bartolini

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Battle of San Romano | Artworks | Uffizi Galleries

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The official website of the Uffizi Galleries. Opening hours, prices, tickets, subscriptions and information for the Uffizi, Pitti Palace (Palatine Gallery, Royal Apartments, Gallery of Modern Art, Treasury of the Grand Dukes, Museum of Costume and Fashion) and Boboli Gardens

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Use the links at the top of the page to help you

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It's hard to follow what's going on in this large and busy painting, partly because it's much darker now than when it was painted. This is one of three battle scenes by Uccello showing the Florentine victory at San Romano in 1432.

The Florentine commander, Niccolò da Tolentino, rides a white charger and wears a magnificent red and gold hat. He leads a cavalry charge from the left, while at the right a knight on a white horse fights off three others.

Uccello was intensely interested in linear perspective - using lines to create an impression of three-dimensional space within a painting - which was a relatively recent discovery. Here he is clearly experimenting: the broken lances in the foreground make a formal grid-like pattern, and scattered pieces of armour are shown at various angles.

It's hard to follow what's going on in this large and busy painting, partly because it's much darker now than when it was painted. This is one of three large battle scenes Paolo Uccello painted in the 1440s; the others are now in the Louvre, Paris and the Uffizi, Florence. All show episodes from the Battle of San Romano on 1 June 1432 - the flowers and oranges here show that it was high summer - an important battle in Florence's war against Lucca, Milan and Siena over access to the port of Pisa

The three paintings show key moments in the Florentine victory, although we are not sure what order they were meant to be seen in, or in what order they were painted. Our panel shows the Florentine commander Niccolò da Tolentino leading an attack. In the painting now in the Uffizi a knight, possibly the Sienese leader Bernardino della Carda, is unhorsed. The Paris panel shows Florence's ally, Michelotto Attendolo da Contignola, giving an order to attack.

Battles are notoriously hard to depict, and Uccello has shown not the chaotic reality of a bloody conflict but a formal, almost courtly, scene. Painted some years after the event, the pictures seem more concerned with glorifying the Florentine victory than relating exact events, although some details do seem to be taken from eyewitness accounts. The knights wear field armour intended for war, but details of it are taken from the parade and tournament rather than the battlefield, and their prancing horses seem to have hopped off a carousel rather than out of a stable.

The main character here is Niccolò da Tolentino, riding a white charger at the head of a frenzied mass of horsemen, crests and lances. His personal emblem, the 'Solomon's knot', appears on the banner held by his standard bearer. Although he grasps a baton of command, da Tolentino is not dressed for battle: he has a mail shirt but no steel cuirass (breastplate) over it; his helmet is carried by his page, who rides behind him, apparently indifferent to the brawl around them. Instead of a helmet, da Tolentino wears a magnificent mazzocchio, a hat made of velvet cloth of gold. His short cloak is made of the same material. The hat, cloak and baton perhaps recall the gifts given to him by the grateful Florentines after the battle, and his gesture and rearing horse are very similar to contemporary equestrian monuments made for successful military commanders.

Just behind him, partly hidden, is a knight with an extravagant helmet and a surcoat (the tunic worn over his armour) of black and white waves. This is possibly Michelotto Attendolo, who was supposed to have rescued da Tolentino at one point when he was cut off from the rest of the Florentine troops. In the background two knights gallop away up the hillside - perhaps the messengers da Tolentino sent when he realised he was in trouble. At the far right, a knight fends off an attack from three others, in a manoeuvre contemporaries would have recognised from tournaments.

Uccello was fascinated by linear perspective, then a relatively recent discovery. He mixed traditional and modern techniques, using real silver and gold leaf for armour and fabrics, but experimenting with the laws of perspective to impose order on a chaotic scene. The broken lances in the foreground are arranged in a grid-like pattern, but the receding lines are blocked by the hedge rather than vanishing at a single point in the distance. The armour scattered on the ground is shown at various angles, but the foreshortening of the fallen knight's body is reversed - his shoulders are larger than his feet, so that he looks back to front in comparison with the rest of the painting. It wasn't really until Andrea Mantegna was painting in the 1450s that artists worked out how to do perspective properly (look at The Agony in the Garden, for example).

The thick hedge and the rising fields behind could be an attempt to show the battle's location, which was described as taking place in a long hollow overgrown with vine and brambles. The whole impression, with the milling crowds, the clumsy perspective and rather doll-like horses, is almost more like that of a contemporary tapestry than a painting.

Once sparkling with burnished gold and silver and brilliant colours, the painting's appearance has altered enormously over time, both from changes in materials and from the damage of repeated cleanings. The silver of the armour has tarnished, the bright vermilion in the knights' banners and the horses' harnesses has turned blue-grey - look at Saint George and the Dragon to get an idea of the original effect - and the green of the hedge has darkened to almost black. The flesh tones on the men's faces has worn away, leaving green underpaint showing through; both horses and landscape have lost their modelling and now look flat, and glazes of ultramarine over blue areas have been eroded.

Most dramatically it has lost its original arched top, removing the hilltops and sky which must have given it a less claustrophobic feel. All three paintings were designed to be hung high on the walls of a room with a vaulted ceiling. They had irregularly shaped corners designed to fit around corbels, and our painting once had three metallic fixings towards the top, presumably to anchor it to a wall. All were given new corners to change them into rectangles early on, when they were moved from their original location.

Painted for Leonardo Bartolini Salimbeni around the time of his second marriage in 1438, they were forcibly removed from the Salimbeni's Florentine town house by Lorenzo de' Medici in 1484, and installed in his private room in the Medici palace. In 1492 they were noted in the inventory of the so-called Camera di Lorenzo, a large room overlooking the garden, where they hung with other battle, hunting and mythological paintings. Lorenzo must have enjoyed the sparkling depiction of former Florentine glories, however unscrupulously obtained. By the end of the sixteenth century they had clearly gone out of fashion: they'd been moved to a corridor near the chapel.

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Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano, probably about 1438-40. Read about this painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more.

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Fun Kids - the UK's children's radio station

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The Battle of San Romano was painted by Paolo Uccello around 1438-40, over 600 years ago. It's a vivid, colourful painting of the battle fought between two feuding sides - Florence, on the left, and Siena on the right, in 1432. The figure in the middle is Niccolò da Mauruzi da Tolentino on his beautiful white horse, the leader of the victorious Florentine forces, you can see their symbol on the banner - the "Knot of Solomon".

It was a set of three paintings originally, showing different events that happened in the battle. The paintings were commissioned by a wealthy family from Florence, the winning side! Take a look at the Florentine army. Aren't they very majestic-looking, draped in gold and bright colours? Do you think this was on purpose?

Paintings aren't always completely truthful when telling stories about the past. They're not like photographs nowadays, where you can see everything as it is in one moment. You can create a completely different story in paintings using a bit of "artistic licence". Historians have to be really careful when looking at paintings to find out about the past. You can make portraits of people looking more beautiful than they really are, and the same goes for battle scenes like this.

Find out what happened in the battle in the painting, here's the white horse telling you his story:

Ciao Bella! It's all going crazy here! Two courageous armies - one from Florence, the other Siena - are battling for territory here in Italia! Uno momento! I just need to CHARRRGE!

Ha ha! Take that! They cannot fail to quiver in their boots at the sight of me! I am such a big strong horse! A charger, no less! And on my back is none other than Niccolò da Mauruzi da Tolentino. He's like the big guy, the main man in charge of the Florentines. The army who WILL be winning this battle - oh yes! We shall be victorious!

Err, what do you mean? You don't think Tolentino is the big guy? Well, just you look at his big hat! Red and Gold - and twice the size of his own head! Check it out! And check out our bling - all the gold and silver on our armour - It's no wonder that those Sienese cowards run from us!

Ha! See how they drop their lances like matchsticks on the ground as they run - and see how the battlefield seems to stretch into the distance forever! Almost as impressive as me! And now, the battle can't wait! Arrivederci amici!

Have a think about how paintings can tell different stories!

How else can we tell the history of something?

We can't tell what happened in the Battle of San Romano just from this painting alone. How else do you think we can understand history? Do you think someone from the losing side would have recorded something, too? Would there be any official documents telling us what happened and how many soldiers died?

There are always two sides to every story. You might have heard that before from one of your parents! Imagine you are a Sienese solder in this painting. How would you feel after losing the battle? Can you try and paint this painting from their point of view? Have a go!

How would the winning side would be feeling here?

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Painting Explorers: The Battle of San Romano - Fun Kids - the UK's children's radio station

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The Battle of San Romano was painted by Paolo Uccello around 1438-40, over 600 years ago. It's a vivid, colourful painting of the battle fought between two feuding sides - Florence, on the left, and Siena on the right, in 1432.