The Battle of San Romano

The broken lances in this picture form an unexpectedly tidy pattern. Their straight lines lead into the scene, while pieces of armour lie at carefully chosen angles. Paolo Uccello, a Florentine painter fascinated by perspective, used the debris of battle to explore the illusion of depth. The rider on the large white horse wears a red and gold hat. He is Niccolò da Tolentino, the Florentine commander at the Battle of San Romano in 1432. Florence’s victory became the subject of three paintings. The other panels are now in Florence and Paris, and show different moments in the fighting. Uccello painted the battle several years after it happened. The horses and splendid armour give it the air of a courtly performance, with the commander easy to pick out from the crowd. This arrangement celebrates victory more clearly than it records the confusion of combat. The picture has darkened with age, making some details difficult to distinguish. In a reproduction, start with the white horse and foreground lances before tracing the action farther back.