The Funerary Monument (or Equestrian Monument) to Sir John HawkwoodAlthough the title of "Sir" is ubiquitously attached to Hawkwood, there is no documentary evidence of the circumstances under which Hawkwood was knighted; most of his contemporary condottieri, regardless of their reputations, were also knights. Hawkwood's knighthood is not listed in the "Register" of Edward, the Black Prince, and some proponents of his knighthood claim that it occurred in Italy. See Caferro, Hawkwood, 9, 42. is a fresco by Paolo Uccello, commemorating English condottiero John Hawkwood, commissioned in 1436 for Florence Cathedral. The fresco is an important example of art commemorating a soldier-for-hire who fought in the Italian peninsula and is a seminal work in the development of perspective.
The politics of the commissioning and recommissioning of the fresco have been analyzed and debated by historians. The fresco is often cited as a form of "Florentine propaganda" for its appropriation of a foreign soldier of fortune as a Florentine hero and for its implied promise to other condottieri of the potential rewards of serving Florence.Caferro, 2006, p. 9. The fresco has also been interpreted as a product of internal political competition between the Albizzi and Medici factions in Renaissance Florence, due to the latter's modification of the work's symbolism and iconography during its recommissioning.
The fresco is the oldest extant and authenticated work of Uccello, from a relatively well-known aspect of his career compared to the periods before and after its creation. The fresco has been restored (once in 1524 by Lorenzo di Credi, who added the frame) and is now detached from the wall; it has been repositioned twice in modern times. It is now on the north wall of the nave, beside a similar depiction of fellow condottiero Niccolò da Tolentino (d.1435) by Andrea del Castagno.
John Hawkwood
Hawkwood had a long military career and a complicated relationship with Florence. He fought for England during the Hundred Years War and then with the "Great Company" which had harassed the Avignon Papacy. After gaining command of the "White Company" from Albert Sterz in the 1360s, Hawkwood led the company across the Alps in 1363 in the employ of John II, Marquess of Montferrat, to take part in his war against Milan.Caferro, 2006, pp. 31–61. Hawkwood and the "White Company" remained in Italy, accepting money from many city-states, both to wage war and to refrain from it.Hudson, 2006, p. 4. Hawkwood's reputation as one of the ablest condottieri in the peninsula developed in the ensuing decades, during which he was employed (by both sides) in the Pisan–Florentine War (1363–1364), notably winning the Battle of Cascina (1364) for Florence,Caferro, 2006, pp. 97–115. in the wars of Perugia against the Pope (1369), and in the service of Bernabò Visconti in his war against a coalition that included Pisa and Florence, and even (in 1372) the Marquis of Monteferrato.Caferro, 2006, pp. 116–143.
Hawkwood then entered the service of Pope Gregory XI in his wars against Milan (1372–1375) and in the War of the Eight Saints (1375–1378), during which Hawkwood helped put down the Florentine-instigated rebellions in the Papal States.Caferro, 2006, pp. 144–174. During the conflict, Hawkwood was paid 130,000 florins—which was extracted from local clergy, bishops, abbots, monasteries, and ecclesiastical institutions—to confine his activities to suppressing the rebellions in the Papal States, rather than directly attacking Florence.Najemy, John M. 2006. A History of Florence 1200–1575. Blackwell Publishing. . pp. 151-155. Hawkwood also received a 600 florin annual salary for the next five years and a lifetime annual pension of 1,200 florins.Caferro, 2006, p. 175.
Hawkwood married Donnina, the illegitimate daughter of Bernabò Visconti, in 1377.Hudson, 2006, p. 5. In that same year he defected to Florence.Caferro, 2006, pp. 175–190. Hawkwood's 1377 massacre at Cesena during the twilight of his papal employment in the War of the Eight Saints continues to tarnish his legacy.Hudson, 2006, pp. 4–5. Thus, until 1377, Hawkwood had principally served the Visconti of Milan and their allies in Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, usually against the interests of Florence, making him an ironic candidate for a monument in the Duomo of Florence. At the bidding of Pisa, Hawkwood attacked the Brunelleschi family's Villa Petraia in Castello, burned Florentine subject territories around Incisa after defeating Florentine condottiero Ranuccio Farnese il Vecchio, and even taunted Florence from outside the city walls.
However, Hawkwood was the de facto commander-in-chief (Captain-General) of Florence's military from 1377 until immediately prior to his death in 1394.Wegener, 1993, p. 131; Borsi, 1994, p. 112. Hawkwood won many victories for Florence, including his suppression of the Ciompi revolt in January 1382,Hudson, 2006, p. 11. but contemporary Florentines would have regarded Hawkwood's successful retreat from Milan late in his career, across three rivers—including the notorious Oglio—and across a barren countryside, as his "greatest military feat".Caferro, 2006, p. 20.
Hawkwood, now in his seventies, made preparations to return to England, where he had been sending money to acquire land, and set up a chantry. Just as he was liquidating his affairs in Italy, he died, on March 17, 1394.Caferro, 2006, p. xiv.Saunders, 2004, pp. 294–295. Coincidentally, letters from Hawkwood to a family friend in England on these arrangements are the oldest surviving correspondence in English (now British Museum).
In 1395, Richard II of England petitioned Florence for the return of Hawkwood's body,Hudson, 2006, p. 9–10. as he had done for Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, the local magnate to the Hawkwood family in England, in whose service he had begun his military career.Caferro, 2006, p. 323. Florence acquiesced to Richard II's request in a June 3, 1395 letter: Our devotion can deny nothing to the eminence of your highness. We will leave nothing undone that is possible to do, so that we may fulfill your good pleasure. So, therefore, although we consider it reflected glory on us and our people to keep the ashes and bones of the late brave and most magnificent captain John Hawkwood, who, as commander of our army, fought most gloriously for us and who at public expense was interred in the principal church of Santa Reparata ... nevertheless, according to the tenor of your request, we freely concede permission that his remains shall return to their native land.
However, it remains an open question whether Hawkwood's remains were ever transferred to England, to the tomb prepared for him at St. Peter's in Sible Hedingham, or whether his remains were reburied in 1405 under the old choir of the Duomo, of which record has been lost since it was repaved in the 16th century.Caferro, 2006, pp. 326–327.Wegener, 1993, p. 132. In any case, the tomb monument would have run into difficulty, as a ban on tombs above floor level in the Cathedral was passed on April 5, 1400.
Context
In the Quattrocento, it was traditional for condottieri like Hawkwood to be buried in major public churches, even when their careers had produced mixed results for the city-state in question. The genre of the equestrian statue was revived during the Quattrocento for the purpose of commemorating condottieri; Donatello's Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata (c. 1447–1453) in Padua is the first surviving bronze equestrian statue since Ancient Rome ("probably with the Hawkwood in mind").Borsook, Eve 1980. The Mural Painters of Tuscany. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. . p. 265.Paoletti, John T. 2005. Art in Renaissance Italy. Laurence King Publishing. . p. 265. In Venice was interred at San Francesco; at Santi Giovanni e Paolo; Paolo Savelli at Basilica dei Frari, along with a wooden equestrian statue on a marble sarcophagus,Hudson, 2006, pp. 5–6. which—along with the bronze horses on the façade of St. Mark—may have inspired Uccello's Hawkwood;Paolieri, 1991, p. 19. and Konrad Aichelberg at a church in Pisa.Caferro, 2006, p. 315. When such burials were not possible, frescoes were an acceptable substitute: Guidoriccio da Fogliano was painted on horseback by Simone Martini in Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in 1328; Pietro Farnese was depicted in a papier-mâché equestrian monument atop a sarcophagus in the Florence Cathedral in 1363.
Holding ever more lavish funeral ceremonies for fallen condottieri was only one way in which Italian city-states competed with each other to attract the services of the most skilled mercenaries.Caferro, 2006, p. 316. Hawkwood's funeral was sandwiched between the funerals in Siena of —who had been poisoned by the Florentines in the Visconti Wars—and Giovanni "Tedesco" da Pietramala.Caferro, 2006, pp. 316–317. The commissioning of Uccello to repaint the fresco came at the "climax" of a war with Lucca, which had recently begun a monument to honor Niccolò Piccinino, in contrast to Piccinino's defaming portrait in the Palazzo della Signoria in 1428,Caferro, 2006, p. 320. depicting him hanging upside-down in chains,Hudson, 2006, p. 6. which was "depaint[ed]" in April 1430.Wegener, 1993, p. 144.
Commissioning Background On August 20, 1393—when the Signoria, at the suggestion of Coluccio Salutati, voted to erect a marble statue of Hawkwood in the Duomo, "that brave men may know that the commune of Florence recompenses true service"—Hawkwood was liquidating his Tuscan properties and preparing to return to England.Caferro, 2006, pp. 310–313. It was unprecedented for the Signoria to vote to erect a monument to a living person in the cathedral.Borsi, 1994, p. 302. The ambiguous plans of the Signoria—which likely was aware of Hawkwood's health status—might well have been for a tomb rather than a cenotaph; Hawkwood died soon after, on March 17, 1394.Caferro, 2006, p. 313. The Signoria went to great lengths (unsuccessfully) to entice Donnina to remain in the city—voting to transfer various sums of money to her (in exchange for Hawkwood's Tuscan fortress), despite "thorny legal issues" which required multiple acts of the city council—indicating to some extent the market value of Hawkwood's symbolic capital.Caferro, 2006, pp. 321–322.
Hawkwood's March 20 funeral began in the Piazza della Signoria, continued to the Battistero di San Giovanni, where his body was placed on the baptismal font for public viewing, and culminated in the Cathedral, at a cost of 410 florins, not counting the substantial expenses of the Guilds.Caferro, 2006, p. 314–315; Hudson, 2006, p. 9; for comparison, the funeral of Coluccio Salutati, the humanist Chancellor of Florence, cost 250 florins. See Caferro, 2006, p. 315.