The Fight for the Standard, after Leonardo da Vinci

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in plate, in image, lower center: L. dela Finse pin.,....G. Edelinck Sc. Collector's mark stamped in blue ink, lower center: escutheon and letters, KONBERG ROTHSCH[ILD]; inscribed, on reverse, in graphite: Mitchell 7203 Watermark: Indiscernible watermark right center.

Label

In a tangle of bodies and horses, two men face one another with swords raised high. Representing the Battle of Anghiari, this image captures the dramatic moment when forces from Florence seize the standard of Milan. A great Florentine victory, this fifteenth-century battle was commemorated in a fresco by the celebrated artist Leonardo da Vinci in the sixteenth century. However, that painting was already lost by the 1550s, known only through drawings and early prints. It is through these copies that Gérard Edelinck, a Dutch printmaker, would have studied Leonardo’s work. The engraving focuses particular attention on the faces of the fighters, who betray no fear as they menace one another. The horses are equally distinctive as their riders drive them forward into the fray. The emotional and compositional complexity of Leonardo’s image made it an enduring representation of the actors of war.

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

ITAL 22, Humanism and Renaissance, Courtney Quaintance, Spring 2014

Anthropology 3.01, Introduction to Anthropology, Charis Ford Morrison Boke 1, Summer 2023

Studio Art 27.01/28.01/74.01, Printmaking I/II/III, Josh Dannin, Summer 2024

Exhibition History

A Decade of Collecting, 1985-1995: Old Master and Nineteenth Century European Prints from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 9, 1995-February 4, 1996, no. 7.

Art and/as Violence, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Art History 2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 12, 2006-March 11, 2007.

Introduction to the History of Art: Works from the 15th to the 18th Centuries, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Art 2, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 24, 1994-February 5, 1995.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire,August 23-December 9, 2023.

Remembrance of Things Past: Prints and Photographs from the Class of 1935 Memorial Fund, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-September 3, 2000.

Publication History

Richard Rand, "A Decade of Collecting, 1985-1995: Old Master and Nineteenth-Century European Prints", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1995, no. 7.

Provenance

Robert Dance, Inc., New York, New York; sold to present collection, 1994.

Catalogue Raisonne

Le Blanc 41

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