Master of Anghiari(?)
Scene of Battle, 1460-1470, tempera on panel
The painting, originally the front panel of a wedding chest, was bought by Herbert Horne in 1912 on the Florentine antiques market for the exorbitant price of seven thousand lire, and attributed by the scholar to a painter in the circle of Paolo Uccello. As a matter of fact the author should be identified as the prolific cassone painter specializing in battle scenes and known as Master of Anghiari from the subject of a panel kept, together with its companion piece panel depicting the Capture of Pisa, in the National Gallery of Dublin. A recurrent element in this master’s works is a taste for heraldic devices on caparisons and banners, the study of horses in their endless poses, the careful description of the surface of things, with a great recourse to gilding and stamping, an artist who, for some figures – as is the case of the horseman with the cylindrical hat on the right in the scene – still actually looks at Paolo Uccello.
