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of the nude or semi-clothed male. Antonio’s preoccupation with the nude is further illustrated in his remarkable engraving The Battle of the Ten Nudes. Medieval artists had kept well clear of nudity, except for damned souls in hell, but it now became a subject in which Florentine artists, with their strict tradition of draftsmanship, specialized. Not only did they draw from the nude (males only; women, except prostitutes, willing to pose nude were rare) but in Antonio’s case studied anatomy too. It was one way in which the Renaissance passion for exact, scientific knowledge expressed itself. A large workshop, like the Pollaiuolos’, not only employed models regularly but kept stocks of anatomical casts in plaster—arms, feet, torsos, etc.—for rapid copying. The brothers did a lot of drawing and engraving, as well as producing ceremonial material and banners for tournaments, and Piero in particular experimented in painting in oils on panel, playing a notable part in making it the standard medium in Tuscany.

A much bigger workshop was run by the Ghirlandaios, Domenico (1449–94) and Davide (1452–1525). They came from a background of agile craftsmen working in leather, cloth, tapestry and other decorative soft goods and employed numerous members of their family—sons, in-laws and so forth. Domenico’s was the organizing, businesslike brain. Though he occasionally worked in Rome, on for instance the lower range of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, he spent most of his life producing a mass of high-quality artistic goods. These included mosaics, something the Florentines usually left to Venice. He painted a grand series of frescoes for Santa Maria Novella in Florence that are remarkable for their durability. Domenico took buon fresco extremely seriously and practiced this difficult craft with highly professional polish, which explains the strong survival power of his output. He also drew beautifully in true local fashion, and large numbers of his drawings have come down to us, so that we can see exactly how a conscientious Florentine artist-craftsman built up a finished picture. He was indeed the epitome of all that was meticulous and professional in Florentine art in the broadest sense, always striving to excel himself and experimenting with new media and techniques. These included various mixtures of oil and tempera, brush-tip drawing, chalk, pen and ink and metalpoint for drawings, with white highlights, and brush drawings on prepared linen. Vasari lists many artists who were trained in Domenico’s shop, including Michelangelo, whose early drawings at least strongly reflect the technique of his master.

The most famous shop of all, however—as we have already noted—was Verrocchio’s. This was a powerhouse of ideas and a brilliant seminary of a huge variety of techniques in different media, for Verrocchio was an all-around craftsman and his figure sculpture and bronze casting were particularly fine. His most famous assistant was Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who was there several years and learned a lot not only from the master but from other brilliant pupils. His training helps to explain the extraordinary breadth of his interests. However, we must not take too elevated a view of the Florentine art shop. It was a business venture, whose chief object was to get lucrative commissions, execute them at a profit and excel or fend off the competition. Florence was about art. But it was also about money, and it was the peculiar gift of leading Florentine craftsmen to pursue one without allowing the other to suffer. In Verrocchio’s shop, the craftsmanship had to be faultless—he insisted on that—but every aid to efficient production was ruthlessly adopted. We see this in Verrocchio’s Tobias and the Angel, now in London’s National Gallery, his exemplary response to a competitive work by the Pollaiuolo brothers on the same, highly popular subject. Their painting is altogether delightful—nothing illustrates better the freshness and joy of the Renaissance—but it is trade all the same. It now seems likely that Verrocchio himself painted only the angel,