Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano at the Uffizi becomes a cartoon

The Battle of San Romano, Paolo Uccello ’s masterpiece created in 1438 on three panels now housed in the Uffizi, the Louvre and the National Gallery in London, becomes an animated cartoon (viewable here on Vimeo), which bears the signature of Swiss director Georges Schwizgebel (Reconvilier, 1944). Founder of Studio GDS, Schwizgebel works in the fields of animation and graphics, winning numerous awards, including the Crystal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement (2017) at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Schwizgebel had been at work for some time (since 2017) on his film The Battle of San Romano, which debuted online, on Vimeo, last December 15. But in reality, the director’s fascination with Paolo Uccello’s masterpiece goes back a long way, namely to 1962, when as an art student Schwizgebel visited the Uffizi and was impressed by the panel with Bernardino della Carda’s Disarching, the great protagonist of the animated short. The work recounts the battle between Florence and Siena that was fought on June 2, 1432, at San Romano, near Pisa: in the end the Florentines, led by Niccolò da Tolentino, prevailed, thanks largely to the arrival of reinforcements led by Micheletto da Cotignola that enabled Florence, which was about to surrender, to prevail over the Sienese commanded by Bernardino della Carda. The three panels were commissioned from Paolo Uccello in 1438 by Leonardo Bartolini Salimbeni, who had participated in the Lucca campaign, a war of which the Battle of San Romano was one of the highlights.

What is special about Schwizgebel’s short film is that it makes no use of digital animation: everything is done by hand. The Battle of San Romano was reproduced in tempera and acrylic on glass, a technique chosen for its ability to lend drama to the animation. The images were animated using traditional techniques, and an original soundtrack was also written, signed by Judith Gruber-Stitzer, which includes the noises of the battle (knights’ blades, horse neighing) over music played by Stéphane Allard (violin), Dave Grott (trombone), Sheila Hannigan (cello) and Mark Simmons (shofar horn).

"I bought a reproduction of the Battle of San Romano when I was 18 years old at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy," Schwizgebel told Vimeo. “I was an art school student in my first year of painting, without much knowledge of art history. Although I was not normally attracted to old paintings, this one made a strong impression on me and still does today. I was also inspired by the use of loops, or loops, which were perfectly suited to a moving version of this image.”

To make the film, the director explained, the image of the Battle of San Romano was broken down into sixteen parts, and the animation is rendered by spiraling, counterclockwise movement on the resulting segments. All without software: “I animate with paper and pencil,” Schwizgebel said, “and then I paint with acrylic paints. It took about six months to make this film. The hardest part was at the beginning, when I had to decide which element of the image would turn into which other element. There were many.” And then, the director further explained, The Battle of San Romano is a painting that has the same proportions as our computer or TV screens... it’s practically 16:9 and so it was very suitable for an animated corton version of it. However, Schwizgebel concludes, “I wouldn’t dare say that this film enhances the experience of direct observation of this work of art for anyone but me, who copied it and eventually turned every element of the original painting into another element. I tried to take advantage of the inherent movement of the painting and stop it with a ’freeze frame,’ which is unique to film.”

Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano at the Uffizi becomes a cartoon

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