Battle of San Romano

Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano is one of the most audacious experiments in the history of Western painting. Created between roughly 1435 and 1460, the work originally comprised a suite of three large panels celebrating the Florentine victory over Sienese forces at the Battle of San Romano in 1432. Today the three panels are separated across Europe: one in the National Gallery in London, one in the Uffizi in Florence, and one in the Louvre in Paris. The Uffizi panel — the only one signed by the artist — is generally considered the centrepiece of the trio.\n\nThe paintings are remarkable above all for their bold exploration of linear perspective, which Uccello pursues with almost obsessive rigour. Broken lances, fallen soldiers, and scattered pieces of armour are arranged on the ground plane with careful geometrical precision, creating an almost theatrical stage for the clashing cavalries above. Yet the figures themselves retain a heraldic, almost decorative quality — horses rear in improbable poses, and the palette is vivid and jewel-like — that prevents the perspective experiment from feeling dry or academic. Lorenzo de' Medici coveted the paintings so ardently that he acquired one and had the other two removed from their owner's home by force, a testament to their extraordinary prestige in fifteenth-century Florence.