Paolo Uccello

Uccello, Paolo 

(also Paolo di Dono). Born 1397 in Florence; died there Dec. 10, 1475. Italian painter of the 15th-century Florentine school.

Uccello was influenced by Donatello, F. Brunelleschi, Masaccio, and especially L. Ghiberti, in whose workshop he trained from 1407 to 1414. In addition to his years in Florence, he worked in Venice (1425–30), Padua (c. 1447), and Urbino (1465–68). Uccello’s works marvelously combine a fidelity to Gothic art and a fascination with the new, realistic style. Striving to organically integrate artistic form with scientific precision, Uccello studied plants, animals, and birds and rendered space in accordance with the rules of mathematical perspective.

Uccello’s works include heroic portraits of his contemporaries, for example, a fresco portrayal of the condottiere J. de Hawk-wood in the cathedral in Florence (1456), three dynamic, vibrant pictures depicting the battle of San Romano, which are among the earliest examples of the battle genre in modern European art (mid-1450’s; National Gallery, London, and other collections), and the charming, poetic Hunting Scene (late 1460’s; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

REFERENCE

Sidona, E. Paolo Uccello. Milan, 1957.