Picasso's Guernica And Uccello's Battle Of San Romano : Different Images Of War

Since the beginning of history, conflict has occurred between people and groups of people. Eventually, people developed the organization to form armies and go to war against one another. Throughout the ages, as artists portrayed images of war, attitudes have changed. Guernica by Pablo Picasso and The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello are both about war, and are both regarding a specific incident in war, the images produced are very different. Due to the differing styles of these battles, the nature of the artistic movement of the time, as well as political and cultural influences of the time, Picasso's Guernica and Uccello's Battle of San Romano portray remarkably contrasting images of the experience of war, which vary from a chivalrous episode of combat to a horrifying terrible event of total chaotic destruction.

The actual battle of San Romano took place in the course of a war between Florence and the Visconti of Milan and Siena, their ally (Borsi, 308). It was a short battle, lasting only three hours (Borsi, 310), and, although it was quite a bloody battle, the outcome was somewhat uncertain. However, Florentine sources made it a great victory (Borsi, 308), and Cosimo de Medici commissioned the painting to celebrate the triumph of the Florence forces. Such a move was undoubtedly rooted in political motives; Cosimo had just returned from exile and was eager to regain his power in Florence. The painting was to be placed in a room in his palace that was frequently used for public business affairs, and citizens and clients could subsequently view the painting and become aware of Cosimo's concern for the fortunes of Florence. The painting portrays images of a calm, organized battle taking place between two armies of toy soldier-like warriors amidst the tapestry-like setting of an orange grove, while oblivious peasants in the background work diligently in their field.

The incident which Picasso refers to in Guernica is of a different sort altogether. In the year 1937, German bombers in the service of Spanish fascists performed an air raid on the Basque town of Guernica, during the Spanish Civil War. This was the world's first bombing of civilians, and more than 1600 people were killed, as well as hundreds wounded (Stokstad, 1059). Picasso, a Spaniard, was living in Paris at the time, and read about the incident in a newspaper, which featured full black and white pictures. Picasso had been asked to contribute to the Spanish Pavillion at the Paris International Exposition, and he had found his subject. His enormous canvas, almost 12' by 26', seems like a history painting, but it does not describe the events in the same way that a normal history painting does. There are no planes air bombs, and no portrayal of any sort of regional scene, and it is neither narrative nor figurative (Ultimate Picasso, 315). A horse in the centre, distinguished by a bulky mass and anguished complexity not possessed by the other figures, dominates the canvas (Oppler, 283). Distorted women, one trapped in a burning house and one clutching her dead child, both scream in agony and anguish at the sky. All the other figures in the painting are equally distorted and disturbing.

Because the very nature of the battles was very different, the images contained therein are very different as well. The attack on Guernica was an unprovoked air raid on civilians, and showed no adherence to the rules of war. As citizens fled the inferno that was their town, low-flying fighter planes gunned them down as they ran. Picasso wanted to show the terror and dismay that he felt about the attack, and his figures well emulate this, with their chaotic distress and violent reactions. Picasso painted Guernica as a political statement against the cruelty of war, and was quoted as saying, "No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy." Ucello's San Romano, on the other hand, was painted specifically to decorate someone's Ð''apartment', and is consequently very inoffensive and makes few, if any, statements about the brutality of war. The battle itself, as previously mentioned, was short, and involved only consenting members of the opposing forces' armies. While the act of battle is still disturbing, such a encounter conjures none of the sentiments invoked by the attack on Guernica.

The images in Guernica are largely symbolic, and are reminiscent of his earlier surrealist images of the 1920's (Arnason, 342). However, the meanings of the symbols are largely open to interpretation. Picasso himself said, "It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them." Nonetheless, there is some general agreement on the meaning of the stronger motifs of the painting. The screaming horse, represents the betrayal of the innocence of the Spanish Public (Stokstad, 1059), and the mother and child can be taken to symbolize the present and future of Spain. It is through these images that the painting acts almost as a condolence letter to the Spanish people, rather than a call to arms (The Ultimate Picasso, 315). The bull is somewhat ambiguous Ð'- it could be an icon of the brute force and aggression inflicted during the tragedy, or perhaps the more traditional symbol of Spain itself, a country associated strongly with the bull. Uccello makes little use of symbolism in his painting, with the setting of the orange grove making an unambiguous allusion to the Medici crest of balls. Boticelli's Primavera also takes place in an orange grove, which is appropriate because it was painted in Florence as a commission for the Medici family. Florentine painting in the early fifteenth century was not so concerned with the use of symbolism as the development of a new kind of composition: painting with scientific perspective.

Perspective is a key tool used in both paintings, although the types of perspective are very different. Perspective was, in fact, so important to Uccello that he is frequently referred to as being obsessed with it. He was so engrossed in his studies of perspective that he was known to hardly look up when his wife called him to bed, and would exclaim, "What a sweet thing this perspective is!" (Janson, 255) His preoccupation is evident in The Battle of San Romano. Ucello took great care in representing the pieces from the battle in correct foreshortening. The whole scene, in fact, seems to take place on a perfectly laid out stage, with broken lances dropped conveniently along orthogonals

...