Antonio Pollaiuolo's Use of the Antique

Low life in high society: a group of comic‐grotesque drawings by Verrocchio*

“…The pose of the Arching Dancer is either directly, or indirectly via Pollaiuolo's Arcetri designs, based on an antique type, found for instance in a Roman cameo of a Dancing Satyr owned by Lorenzo de' Medici, and on a Bacchic sarcophagus in the Camposanto, Pisa. 77 In the Henpecked Husband the pose of the man references the antique type of a half-fallen warrior, known in many examples, including the Arch of Constantine and Trajan's Column. 78 The lunging poses of the crone and the Running Dancer are versions of another well-known antique pose, found on Trajan's Column, Amazon and Bacchic sarcophagi, and in three-dimensional sculptures such as the Niobid Pedagogue or the Piping Marsyas; 79 as a means of suggesting forward movement, it was an established motif in the Florentine repertory, although it finds its most dynamic treatment in Pollaiuolo.…”