Pollaiuolo, Antonio (b Florence, c.1432; d Rome, ?4 Feb. 1498) and Piero (b Florence, c.1441; d Rome, c.1496). Florentine artists, brothers, who jointly ran a flourishing workshop, first in their native city and then from about 1484 in Rome. Both of them are recorded as being painters and sculptors and there are considerable problems in attempting to disentangle their individual contributions to their output. However, Antonio was evidently the dominant figure and primarily a goldsmith and worker in bronze, whilst Piero was mainly a painter. Several documented paintings by Piero are known, all of fairly mediocre quality, but none by Antonio, and as certain pictures from the studio of the two brothers are so much better than Piero's independent works, it is generally assumed that Antonio had a major involvement in them. The most important of these pictures is the
Martyrdom of St Sebastian in the National Gallery, London, probably painted in 1475. The figures of the archers in the foreground reveal a mastery of anatomy paralleled in certain bronzes generally accepted as Antonio's (e.g. the
Hercules and Antaeus,
c.1475–80, in the Bargello, Florence), in his only surviving engraving (
Battle of the Nude Men,
c.1460), and in his numerous pen drawings in which his typically wiry figures are seen in vigorous and expressive movement. His main contribution to Florentine painting lay in his searching analysis of the human figure in movement or under conditions of strain, but he is also important for his pioneering interest in landscape, seen in the National Gallery
St Sebastian and other works. He is said to have anticipated
Leonardo in dissecting corpses in order to study the anatomy of the body.
Antonio's two principal public works were the bronze tombs of Pope Sixtus IV ( Francesco della
Rovere) (signed and dated 1493) and Pope Innocent VIII (
c.1492–8), both in St Peter's, Rome. The latter contains the first sepulchral effigy that simulated the living man.