Antonio del Pollaiuolo in the context of "Romulus and Remus"

The Capitoline Wolf (Italian: Lupa Capitolina) is a bronze sculpture depicting a scene from the legend of the founding of Rome. The sculpture shows a she-wolf suckling the mythical twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. According to the legend, when King Numitor, grandfather of the twins, was overthrown by his brother Amulius in Alba Longa, the usurper ordered them to be cast into the Tiber River. They were rescued by a she-wolf that cared for them until a herdsman, Faustulus, found and raised them.

The age and origin of the Capitoline Wolf are controversial. The statue was long thought to be an Etruscan work of the fifth century BC, with the twins added in the late 15th century AD, probably by sculptor Antonio del Pollaiuolo. However, radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating in the 21st century has suggested that the wolf portion of the statue may have been cast between 1021 and 1153, though the results are inconsistent, and there is yet no consensus for a revised dating. In a conference on this theme, most academics continued to support an ancient Etruscan origin. An analysis of the metal suggests that it contains lead from a source not known to have operated during medieval times.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by the north, above all by Florence. This was especially the case in the quattrocento (15th century), after which Rome came to equal or exceed it as a centre, though producing few sculptors itself. Major Florentine sculptors in stone included (in rough chronological order, with dates of death) Orcagna (1368), Nanni di Banco (1421), Filippo Brunelleschi (1446), Nanni di Bartolo (1451), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1455), Donatello (1466), Bernardo (1464) and his brother Antonio Rossellino (1479), Andrea del Verrocchio (1488), Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1498), Michelangelo (1564), and Jacopo Sansovino (1570). Elsewhere there was the Siennese Jacopo della Quercia (1438), from Lombardy Pietro Lombardo (1515) and his sons, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1522), Andrea Sansovino (1529), Vincenzo Danti (1576), Leone Leoni (1590), and Giambologna (1608, born in Flanders).

Pollaiolo or Pollaiuolo is the name of several people, including:

• Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1429/1433–1498), Italian Renaissance artist in goldsmithing, sculpture and painting
• Piero del Pollaiuolo (1443–1496), Italian Renaissance painter, younger brother of Antonio
• Simone del Pollaiolo (1457–1508), Italian Renaissance architect, nephew of Antonio and Piero

Portrait of a Woman is a c.1475 tempera and oil on panel painting by Antonio or Piero del Pollaiuolo. It has been in the Uffizi in Florence since 1861. Since 1861 it has been misattributed to Piero della Francesca, a young Leonardo da Vinci and Cosimo Rosselli.

It forms part of a group of profile portraits of women which also includes one in Milan, one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and another at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Berenson attributes the more accomplished works in the group to Antonio and the others (along with the weaker sections of the better works) to Piero. Other art historians attribute them all to Piero on the grounds that Vasari mentions Antonio only as an engraver and sculptor and not as a painter. A third group attributes all the profiles to Piero and other mythological, action and battle scenes among the Pollaiolo oeuvre to Antonio.

The Florentine Renaissance in art is the new approach to art and culture in Florence during the period from approximately the beginning of the 15th century to the end of the 16th. This new figurative language was linked to a new way of thinking about humankind and the world around it, based on the local culture and humanism already highlighted in the 14th century by Petrarch and Coluccio Salutati, among others. Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio's innovations in the figurative arts at the very beginning of the 15th century were not immediately accepted by the community, and for some twenty years remained misunderstood and in the minority compared to International Gothic.

Thereafter, the figurative language of the Renaissance gradually became the most popular and was transmitted to other Italian courts, including the papal court, as well as to European courts, thanks to the movement of artists from one court to another. Contact with these travellers gave rise to local disciples.