Funerary Monument To Sir John Hawkwood - Style

Style

The reworked fresco has been seen as "classicizing" the image of the condottieri, with the terra verde technique giving the conceit of an equestrian bronze statue. The horse's proportions are based loosely upon those prescribed by Alberti in De equo animante, which in turn is based upon the anonymous Sonetto del Cavallo Perfetto; however, in many ways the horse departs radically from Alberti's ideal of a harmonious and "lithe" creature in the style of Leonello d'Este's monument to Niccolò III d'Este, Arco del Cavallo in Ferrara. Furthermore, Uccello's perspective in the Hawkwood monument openly flaunted Alberti's conception of perspective as demarcated in De Pictura (1435, translated into Italian as Della Pittura in 1436): the vanishing point is at the eye-level of the spectator rather than within the field of the fresco, for example. Alberti's De re aedificatoria also objected to statues of soldiers and/or lay burials in churches. Although the fresco is often called "monochrome", its background is dark red, the horse and tomb are accented in red, black, white, and orange. The Trompe-l'œil perspective from the base, the chiaroscuro relief-effect of the horse and the rider, and lighting from the left are similar to Masaccio's Holy Trinity. The connection to Masaccio is so strong (or so often reported) that Francesco Albertini actually attributed the work to Massaccio in 1510. However, Uccello's fresco has two viewpoints: the horse and rider are painted as if on level with the spectator, and the cenotaph is seen as if from below.

A variety of explanations have been proposed for this split perspective, which has even been suggested by Frederick Hartt to have been a practical joke. Entangled in these questions of perspective is Vasari's criticism of the horse's raising both its right legs at the same time, which would likely topple the horse, if accomplished. However, it is clear from Uccello's other works that he was not interested in using perspective simply for realism; rather, Uccello "placed in an unnatural, fantastic overall atmosphere, the fruit of this painter's complex and unique imagination". This style has even been cited as an example of synthetic realism in line with the late Gothic movement.