Funerary Monument To Sir John Hawkwood - Interpretation

Interpretation

By classicizing the condottieri, the portrait may have represented an opportunity to—as Leonardo Bruni had advocated—"revive the ancient form of tribute" by choosing a "long-dead and uncontroversial subject". Mallett has interpreted the fresco as a Medicean attempt to exalt "the praiseworthiness of condottieri to a populace with mixed feelings". In fact, Cosimo may have allowed the former Albizzi project to go through merely to pave the way for a similar honor for Niccolò da Tolentino (died 1435), a condottiero whom the Medici would have favored over Hawkwood. The Tolentino fresco was commissioned 20 years after the soldier of fortune's death, and was specified in its contract to be painted in "the same manner and form as the Hawkwood". Thus, the recommissioning of the portrait may be read as part of an ongoing debate over the appropriateness of condottieri for a Republic. Bruni raises this subject in De militia (1420), arguing for a standing Florentine militia, especially given the close ties between Tolentino and the Medici. Intending to depict Hawkwood as an "obedient captain conducting an inspection of troops", the conceit of Hawkwood patiently reviewing troops is "suggestive of a loyal communal servant".

The Medici may have wished to emphasize that point that any condottiero, no matter how hostile or fickle, could be bought off and manipulated to Florentine interests and truly Florentinized. Attempts to claim Hawkwood as Florentine were well underway even before his death; for example, Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder wrote in 1391 that Hawkwood "no longer has any foreign blood and has become regenerated more strongly and more healthful in fiber and body under the moderating sky of Italy". Such a viewpoint has even crept into modern scholarship: the 19th-century Italian historian Ercole Ricotti called Hawkwood "the last of the foreign condottieri or the first of the Italian ones"; his 18th-century biography Domenico Maria Manni called him "general captain of Florentine armies" and virtually ignored two decades of Hawkwood's service to other city-states; even in the 20th century, Friedrich Gaupp attempted to characterize Hawkwood's direct attack on Florence as a "marriage proposal".