Piero del Pollaiuolo ( , , ; also spelled Pollaiolo; – by 1496), whose birth name was Piero Benci, was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. His older brother, by about ten years, was the artist Antonio del Pollaiuolo and the two frequently worked together. Their work shows both classical influences and an interest in human anatomy; according to Vasari, the brothers carried out dissections to improve their knowledge of the subject (though modern scholars tend to doubt this).
Giorgio Vasari, who wrote several decades after both brothers were dead, includes a joint biography of Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Vasari says that Antonio was especially highly regarded for his disegno or drawing, and it may be that on shared works he did most of the underdrawing, leaving Piero and their assistants to complete the painting. Vasari began the tradition of stressing the contribution of Antonio rather than Piero to the paintings, which went largely unchallenged until the 20th century, despite suspicions by art historians such as "Crowe and Cavalcaselle" in the late 19th century, and in the 20th Martin Davies, later Director of the National Gallery. In the 21st century a full and partly successful challenge has been mounted, and some attributions changed.
In recent years there has been a trend among art historians to increase the credit Piero is given for the paintings, led by figures such as Aldo Galli, whose Antonio and Piero Del Pollaiuolo: Silver and Gold, Painting and Bronze (2014) assigns the actual painting of many works to Piero that had long been given to Antonio, or both brothers. At least one of the brothers was influenced by the landscape style of Early Netherlandish painting, and the revisionist school thinks that this was Piero.
Assigning attributions
Contemporaries regarded Antonio as much the more significant talent; he was also a sculptor, whereas Piero seems only to have painted. They had separate workshops in a shared building. Disentangling their contributions, and those of their assistants, in paintings is difficult, as can be seen from Vasari onwards. Many works are given joint attributions, but others, especially smaller works, are given to a single brother. In some cases these have changed over the years, for example the Apollo and Daphne in the National Gallery in London was long attributed to Antonio, but by 2023 is described by the museum as by Piero. Davies, in 1961, noted "The attribution to Antonio, claimed to be a better man than Piero, is little more than a recognition of its high quality".
In the traditional distribution of authorship, Piero (and his workshop) was usually given the smaller altarpieces and portraits, with mythological subjects, especially several with Hercules, given to Antonio. One well-known portrait in Berlin, the Profile Portrait of a Young Lady has been attributed to both brothers individually, as well as a string of other masters. Piero only signed and dated one painting, his Coronation of the Virgin of 1483 in Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano, while Antonio only signed his most important sculptures, his papal tombs, and his single engraving, the Battle of the Nude Men.
A profile portrait of a richly dressed young woman, the Museo Poldi Pezzoli's Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1470), is now also regarded by the museum (Aldo Galli's base) as by Piero, but in 2005 was "now generally assigned to Antonio", according to Alison Wright, author of the most recent monograph of the brothers in English. Similar portraits in Berlin, the Uffizi in Florence, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York form a group of four that are typically given the same attribution, but the plainer and more forceful Boston female portrait is separated by many (see below).
A letter by Antonio in 1494 stated that the original, now lost, very large three paintings featuring Hercules done for the Palazzo Medici over thirty years before, were a work of both brothers, the only specific documentation tying Antonio to any work in painting. The miniature versions of two of them that are now in the Uffizi are one pair of traditional attributions to Antonio that Galli accepts.
In the case of the largest surviving Pollaiuolo painting, the Saint Sebastian altarpiece now in London, differences in quality within the large painted area have always been noted by art historians, and traditionally those parts regarded as of top quality were attributed to Antonio, and those less good to Piero or assistants. Galli sees the whole piece as Piero's, with his team.