This monumental fresco, painted by Paolo Uccello in 1436, was commissioned by the Republic of Florence to celebrate the Anglo-Saxon condottiere John Hawkwood (italianized as Giovanni Acuto), who had successfully led the Florentine troops and remained in their service until his death in 1394, after which he was buried with great honours in the city’s cathedral; forty years later, when, following a request from King Richard II of England, his remains were transferred to his native Sible Hedingham (a town in Essex not far from London), it was decided to create this enormous equestrian portrait ad memoriam, to be placed in the cathedral.
The sarcophagus, resting on corbels between which Hawkwood’s coats of arms are prominently displayed, is adorned with a plaque bearing the funerary inscription; above it, the captain, shown on parade wearing armour (but with a hat instead of a helmet), a sheathed sword, and holding his commander's baton aloft, rides a richly caparisoned horse; the figures are painted in "verdaccio" against a red background, using two different perspectival systems (the base is strongly foreshortened when viewed from below, whereas the horse and rider are depicted in a rigid frontal view) and are modelled with light and shade according to the actual illumination of the cathedral nave.
The idea of depicting the condottiere as a kind of "wall-mounted sarcophagus" represented in paint derives from the fourteenth-century funerary monument of another captain of fortune, Piero Farnese, also located in the cathedral and likewise consisting of a painted marble sarcophagus surmounted by a wooden equestrian portrait.
This monumental fresco, painted by Paolo Uccello in 1436, was commissioned by the Republic of Florence to celebrate the Anglo-Saxon condottiere John Hawkwood (italianized as Giovanni Acuto), who had successfully led the Florentine troops and remained in their service until his death in 1394
