The painting represents the main events of San Romano battle on 1 June 1432, when the Florentines, led by Niccolò da Tolentino, defeated the Sienese.

In the foreground there are two lined up armies with a large white horse in the center, which belongs to Bernardino della Ciarda, the leader of the Sienese army, who is about to fall after being hit by the spear of the enemy.
The scene is painted with geometric construction of perspective that encapsulates the excitement and drama of the clash, making it seem unreal. Knights and horses are wearing the colors of their cities, red and silver of Florence and black and silver of Siena, but their fancy and shining armors seem more suitable for a tournament than a battle.

There is more than one perspective in this painting. Using multiple vanishing points, the painter creates a double vision, one for the battle in the foreground and one in the background, where distant figures are hunting rabbits.
Pure and bright colors, red, white and grey of the armors and horses create individual forms.

There are two other similar panels (Niccolò da Tolentino leading the Florentines, London, National Gallery and the Counterattack of Michele Attendolo, Louvre, Paris) which were kept in the house of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in Palazzo Medici Riccardi, mentioned in the inventory of 1492. Lorenzo bought them in 1484 from the sons of Lionardo Bartolini Salimberi, who had been in the battle and who commissioned the three panels from Paolo Uccello in 1483 with the most memorable moments of the historic day.

In the 17th century the three panels were moved to the Guardaroba Medicea and in 1784 to the Uffizi Gallery. In 1857 and 1863 the National Gallery of London and Louvre bought the other two panels.

There’s a painters signature on the shield lying on the ground, on the bottom left “PAULI.UGIELI.OPUS”

Paolo di Dono was born in Pratovecchio (Casentino) in 1397 and he studied in Florence with Starnina, international gothic painter and in the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti, where he worked on the second door of the Florence Baptistery in 1407.

After the years in Venice in 1425 – 1430 and Bologna in 1431 he returned to Florence and painted the frescoes the Funerary Monument to Giovanni Acuto (1436) in Florence Cathedral and the medallions with four prophets around the clock of the counter façade (1441 – 1443).

He also painted the frescoes Stories of Genesis in the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella and the Stories of the Hermits in San Miniato al Monte.

From 1465 to 1469 he was in Urbino where he painted the panel Miracle of Ostia of which there is only a platform left in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche.

He died in Florence in 1475. Among his most important works are The Hunt in the Forest (Ashmolean Museum of Oxford) St. George and the Dragon (National Gallery of London) and the three panels of the Battle of San Romano, in Uffizi, National Gallery of London and Louvre.

The Uffizi gallery was established in 1560 when Cosimo I Medici, the Duke of Tuscany, wanted to put together the Florentine offices and magistrates (hence the name uffici, offices) in a single building, to have a better control over them.

The work was entrusted to Giorgio Vasari and the construction started the following year. The building was designed in U-shape, consisting of a long east wing, a short corridor overlooking the Arno river and a short west wing, forming classic pattern of a Tuscan loggia. The entrance of the gallery is situated right next to Palazzo Vecchio, the house of the dukes.

The first museological exhibition was organized by Francesco I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1574 to 1587. Thanks to the architect Buontalenti and the initiative of Ferdinand II, the gallery became a representation site, decorated by Antonio Tempesta, where the artworks were conserved as well as the series of the portraits of the Illustrious Men which were placed next to the portraits of the Medici family.

The overall space consists of 8000 square meters and forty-five rooms, all in the third floor, where the art collection includes some of the greatest masterpieces of Italian and European art, such as Giotto’s Maestà di Ognissanti, Simone Martini’s Trinity, the altarpieces of Duccio, Gentile da Fabriano and Mantegna, the Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo Da Vinci, many works of Botticelli, among them the Venus and the Spring, Raphael’s Madonna della Seggiola and Madonna of the Goldfinch, Tiitan’s Venus of Urbino, Caravaggio’s Bacchus and Rubens’s Triumph of Henry IV.

Ferdinand II wanted to add other rooms in the gallery: the room of Mathematics, a terrace and the armory. Between 1696 and 1699 the Grand Duke Cosimo III ordered the decoration of the corridor overlooking the Arno river with frescoes of religious subjects and he sent to Florence some of the most famous examples of ancient statues conserved in Villa Medici of Rome. In this occasion was built the Sala della Niobe, where the ancient sculptures were placed. Other self-portraits of ancient and contemporary painters were acquired and placed in the Vasari Corridor. Cardinal Leopoldo de Medici added to Uffizi his collection of graphic art and created the cabinet nowadays known as the department of drawings and prints.

After the extinction of the house of Medici due to lack of heirs, in 1737 Anna Maria Luisa de Medici donated the treasures of the Uffizi gallery to the city of Florence, so that the collection would always stay where it was created. In 1769 the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo opens the gallery to the public. In the 1770s’ Uffizi was seen as a advantaged laboratory for the studies of art history and for preparation of art, thanks to the work of Luigi di Lanzi and Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni.

During the Kingdom of Italy, the renaissance statues were moved to the new museum of Bargello and the gallery was gradually taking the function of Pinacoteca. More and more visitors came, and the magistrates were transformed to public archives.

In 1900 the gallery acquired the painting collection of the Arcispedale of Santa Maria Nuova, including artworks such as the Portinari Triptych of Hugo van der Goes, from the church of Sant’Edigio. In the beginning of the 20th century the gallery reinforced the collection by acquiring many works of the 14th and 15th centuries from churches and other religious institutes, which were still absent in the museums historical framework.

The first renovation of Uffizi’s rooms dates back to 1956, when the architects Giovanni Michelucci, Carlo Scarpa and Ignazio Gardella renewed the rooms with light tones of colors that highlight the wooden ceiling. In 1969 the gallery purchased the collection of Contini Bonacossi including Giovanni Bellini’s St. Jerome, Cima da Conegliano’s St. Jerome, Francesco Francia’s St. Francis, Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene, Tintoretto’s canvases and Velazquez’s Waterseller of Seville and Portrait of Philip IV of Spain.

In 2006 the Uffizi galleries started the architectural restoration work, adjustments of the implantation and new layouts for the rooms. The museum remained always open and with the reform of the Italian museum system in 2014 the museums of Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens were joined to the Uffizi.