UCCELLO, Paolo (originally Paolo di Dono)
Biography
Uccello, Paolo, real name PAOLO DI DONO (circa
1397-1475), Italian Renaissance painter, notable for innovations in the
use of foreshortening and linear perspective. He was born in Florence and
apprenticed at an early age to the Florentine artist Lorenzo
Ghiberti. In 1425 he went to Venice to design mosaics for the facade
of Saint Mark's. He returned to Florence and in 1436 painted a fresco of
the English soldier of fortune Sir John Hawkwood for the Florence Cathedral.
About 1444 he executed a series of stained-glass windows for the cathedral,
of which one, on the resurrection, is still in place. Fragments also remain
of frescoes painted about 1447 in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella
in Florence, depicting stories of the creation and the flood. Few paintings
of Uccello are extant. The most famous are three versions of the Battle
of San Romano (Uffizi
in Florence; Louvre in Paris; and National Gallery in London), made in
the late 1440s. Another major work is The Hunt (1468, Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford, England). These works show the painter's sophisticated handling
of scientific perspective and his sense of decorative pattern.
"Uccello, Paolo," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994
Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
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