In her exemplary book, which began as a doctoral dissertation in 1992, Alison Wright provides a comprehensive examination of the Pollaiuolo brothers’ substantial artistic productivity in Florence and Rome during the second half of the quattrocento, contextualizing their working lives and era. Although she adopts a traditional monographic approach to her subject, the author seeks to reveal the professional reputations of these artists and the innovative characteristics of their works of art. Wright implements a roughly chronological arrangement for her ambitious project, examining Antonio’s and Piero’s works categorically, by medium or project. In fourteen chapters, she explores the iconography, reception, and social and cultural contexts of the two brothers’ surviving works. The first chapter formulates a biography of the siblings, which is gleaned from numerous original and secondary sources and serves as the foundation for the subsequent sections. Their paintings are discussed in chapters 3 (the earliest paintings and the lost Labors of Hercules), 4 (secular and mythological subjects), 5 (portraiture), 7 (altarpieces), 8 (civic imagery), and 10 (Piero’s later independent works). Their sculpture is addressed in chapters 11 (small-scale bronzes), 12, and 13 (the tombs of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, respectively). Antonio’s designs, drawings, goldsmith work, and engraving form the topics of chapters 2, 6, and 9. The final chapter examines the legacy of the two brothers. A catalogue and two appendices containing documentary records for Piero’s paintings bring the tome to a close. Predictably, Antonio’s oeuvre becomes the focus of Wright’s study due to his greater productivity and significance.

Antonio emerges from the pages of Wright’s text as an ambitious, entrepreneurial artist laboring in two thriving cities that offered many opportunities. His mode of career advancement and recognition is through the pursuit of highly visible commissions from the most prominent patrons in society. And whether he is painting the famous lost Hercules canvases for the Medici in his youth or crafting the bronze tombs of popes toward the end of his life, Antonio comes across as prodigious and innovative in many media. His profession and training commenced as a goldsmith, creating already in 1457 the base of the Florentine Baptistery cross before he was legally emancipated from his father. In chapter 2, Wright contextualizes the world of goldsmiths and silversmiths in Renaissance Florence, a flourishing enterprise then as it is today. And although very few of the luxury products originating from these fifteenth-century botteghe survive, metalwork formed part of the conspicuous consumption and display that became the very currency of family honor among the aristocracy. At least two brilliant sculptors of the period—Filippo Brunelleschi and apparently Donatello—began their careers as goldsmiths. By mid-century, goldsmiths such as Lorenzo Ghiberti were creating important civic monuments and gaining prestige in the city. Antonio followed in their footsteps.

The notion of Antonio’s quest for artistic prominence is perhaps best developed in the discussion in chapter 6 of his well-known Battle of the Nudes engraving (Cleveland Museum of Art). Wright attends here to the work’s novelty, singularity, context, and possible symbolism. Noting the problems with various recent interpretations of the image, she instead seeks clues to its meaning in its most innovative factors. Wright argues that its complexity would have demanded a laborious process that ostensibly served to further Antonio’s early career. And rather than seeking one definitive interpretation for the engraving, she proposes a deliberate lack of fixed symbolism in order to facilitate a multiplicity of readings. Wright’s contextualization of the engraving emphasizes its inspiration by and probable emulation of ancient historiated reliefs that would have been undecipherable by Pollaiuolo and his contemporaries. Its most revolutionary feature is perhaps its Latinized signature, which is more prominent and complete than those on Northern European prints of the period. Wright convincingly suggests that its purpose was to claim authorship of its design and printing, but also to promote Antonio’s abilities and gain new commissions, a ploy that apparently produced the desired results. Antonio signed several works of art in addition to his engraving, including the thurible and incense-boat designs at the Uffizi and both papal tombs. Wright observes that Antonio “adeptly deployed the antique language of fame for the benefit of his own enterprise” (2).

The author consistently stresses the innovative and experimental aspects of the brothers’ efforts. For example, she asserts that their use of oil paint—rather than the more traditional tempera—on objects such as the altarpiece for the Cardinal of Portugal’s chapel at San Miniato (chapter 7) helped them achieve the rich coloristic effects typical of Netherlandish painting, with which the patron would have been familiar. The vibrant hues and contrasting textures of brocade, fur, and bejeweled velvet worn by Saints Vincent, James, and Eustace in the painting would have been visually pleasing to their royal sponsor, Wright affirms. Similarly, she considers the ornamental aesthetic of Piero’s Berlin Annunciation, for which “irregular marbling is achieved using loose, transparent glazes whose thick, liquid quality is . . . indicative of an oil medium. . . . The brush was sometimes loaded with more than one color, or color was applied directly onto another, wet in wet” (306). She also pays tribute in chapter 4 to Antonio’s conception of secular themes, as in his Apollo and Daphne (National Gallery, London), which offered him a “new dispensation to develop the narrative and dynamic potential of the figure in movement” (93). Here, Wright emphasizes his novel approach to the difficult subject of Daphne’s transformation into a laurel while pursued by Apollo, a theme that other artists confusingly depicted as a series of sequences.

Beyond the topics of the siblings’ artistic innovation and reputation, the reader at times catches glimpses of their relationship and individuality. Not only is Antonio celebrated here as the competent and capable maestro di disegno in constant demand, he also concerns himself with his brother’s career as part of the family enterprise, frequently petitioning and securing commissions for him. But Wright manages to extricate Piero from behind Antonio’s shadow by devoting chapters 8 and 10 to his works. This is not an easy task, since Piero has received little scholarly attention in the past, with the exception of unfavorable criticism based mostly on stylistic aspects of his paintings. Wright eschews this traditional approach, resituating his artwork in its contemporary milieu. Unlike Antonio, Piero was primarily a painter, but one for whom only a few works survive, including the Mercanzia Virtues series (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), his Annunciation and Coronation altarpieces (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; Sant’ Agostino, San Gimignano), and attributed profile portraits of women (at the Uffizi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Clearly, Antonio was the family maverick who mastered several artistic methods and explored avant-garde subject matter. In contrast, his younger sibling apparently favored more conventional moralizing or religious topics, preferred painting to other media, and served as his brother’s assistant when necessary. But Wright persuasively demonstrates that, in his time, Piero was a well-regarded and frequently sought-after maestro di colorito who created altarpieces and other highly visible commissions for important patrons.

Wright’s volume has much to recommend it. Her careful attention to scholarship is rich in empirical observation and comprehensive attention to detail. Throughout the text, Wright asks insightful questions, seeking to answer them whenever evidence is available. The writing is lucid and will appeal to established and incipient scholars. The abundance of crisp color photographs—several of which seem to have been commissioned for this project—permits fresh scrutiny of familiar objects. Many of these are in full-page format that allow the reader to inspect minute details or various angles of the pieces. This is especially useful for sculpture, such as Antonio’s bronze Hercules and Anteus (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence), for which there are at least six large color photographs from several angles. I also counted sixteen color images (and others in black and white) revealing the details of the tomb of Sixtus IV. Moreover, many reproductions of ancient and contemporary art help contextualize the two brothers’ products and allow for comparisons. My only complaint was the difficulty I constantly had in locating dates for the artwork. As a source for quick reference, the logical place for these would have been in the photo captions or the catalogue headings, rather than embedded in the text. This would have been most useful because Wright often reassigns dates for the objects. This minor problem, however, will not prevent Wright’s book from becoming an important authority on the oeuvre of the Pollaiuolo, which scholars will consult for years to come.