Paolo Uccello, Monument of John Hawkwood

Imposing fresco painted by Paolo Uccello in 1436 as a commemorative monument to the war captain Sir John Hawkwood, Italianized in “Giovanni Acuto” (Sible Hedingham, UK, around 1320 – Florence, 14 March 1394). The painting was commissioned to Paolo di Dono (called "Uccello") by the Republic of Florence to celebrate the Anglo-Saxon commander who had led the Florentine troops victoriously. Upon his death, the captain was buried in the Cathedral with great honors, but only forty years later, when his body was brought back to his homeland at the request of King Richard II, it was decided to realize this enormous equestrian portrait “ad memoriam”. The painter imagined not a portrait as if from life, but rather the representation in painting of a sarcophagus wall-mounted, surmounted by an equestrian statue. The idea took up the fourteenth-century funeral monument of another mercenary captain, Piero Farnese, also located in the cathedral and also composed of a painted marble sarcophagus (now in the museum) surmounted by a wooden equestrian portrait (now lost ). Paolo Uccello painted the figures in verdaccio on a red background, chiaroscuro according to the real lighting of the nave and following two different vanishing points: one for the sarcophagus and one for the rider, so that the horse appears to be poised on the outer edge of the case. Mounted on shelves, among which the coats of arms of Hawkwood stand out, the sarcophagus is decorated with a plaque with the funerary inscription. Above, the captain on parade stands: John Hawkwood leads with proud firmness the horse, which, richly caparisoned, proceeds at a trot. The knight is in armour, but wears a hat instead of a helmet and keeps his sword sheathed and baton raised. We know from documents that the first version of the painting was not appreciated by the member of the mangers boards of the Cathedral who asked the painter to correct it. The grotesque frame is a later addition by Lorenzo di Credi (1524). In 1842 the painting was detached from the wall and transferred on canvas. It has been restored three times: in 1954, in 2000 and in 2022.