Battle (detail)

Originally installed over a fireplace in the Palazzo Medici, the bronze Battle relief is a reduced copy of an antique Roman battle sarcophagus in the Campo Santo, Pisa, and is often cited as a watershed in the history of antique revival. The sarcophagus has a hole in its centre, and in his version Bertoldo modelled this section afresh. Set amid the tumultuous scene of fighting nudes and horsemen is a rider wearing a winged helmet but wielding a club and girt by a lionskin, emblems that identify him as Hercules. The two Victories flanking the action are linear and elongated. The figures, freely adapted from the Pisan sarcophagus and others, have bony but well-formed physiognomies with angular gestures and small, regular facial features set in somewhat myopic expressions.