Piero del Pollaiuolo

In August 1469, Florence's merchant court, the Tribunale della Mercanzia, hired Piero del Pollaiuolo to paint seven panels of the Virtues for the seat-backs of its audience hall, right on the Piazza della Signoria. Piero was slow, and while he worked the young Sandro Botticelli slipped in and delivered one of the seven, Fortitude, on his own. Piero and his older brother Antonio, a sculptor and goldsmith he often worked beside, protested loudly, and a second contract handed the rest of the series back to Piero's workshop.

Six of those panels survive today in the Uffizi, seated women holding the emblems of Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Prudence and Temperance, painted in the bright, hard-edged manner the Pollaiuolo shop was known for. Hang them beside Botticelli's single intruder and the contrast that started the quarrel is still there to read.

Piero spent his career in that family workshop, sharing designs with Antonio, and the two eventually left Florence for Rome, where both died within a couple of years of each other in the 1490s.