La Bataille de Pydna

The attribution of this Battle of Pydna to Andrea del Verrocchio is unusual — Verrocchio is overwhelmingly known as a sculptor and goldsmith who also ran a major Florentine painting workshop. A painting of the Battle of Pydna (168 BC), in which Rome defeated the Macedonian king Perseus, would fit within the humanist interest in ancient history that characterised Florentine intellectual culture of the 1470s–80s. If authentic, it would represent a very rare secular narrative painting from Verrocchio's workshop, more commonly associated with altarpieces and devotional images.

The work depicts ancient battle with the formal vocabulary of the Florentine workshop tradition: overlapping figures in armour, rearing horses, and landscape recession. Attribution questions make assessment of technique complex, but the handling of metallic surfaces and muscular anatomy is consistent with Verrocchio workshop production of the late Quattrocento.