Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1422-1492 Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational, calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci, Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master; and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene, memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant.   Related Paintings of Piero della Francesca :. | Polyptych of the Misericordia | sigismondo malatesta, detail from st sigismund and | detail of the dogs from st sigismund and sigismondo pandolfo malatesta | portrait of battista sforza | Head of an Angel |
Related Artists:
Thomas Robins the Elder
1716-1770
Thomas Webster
(March 10, 1800 - September 23, 1886), was an English genre painter, who lived for many years at the artists' colony in Cranbrook. Webster was born in Ranelagh Street, Pimlico, London. His father was a member of the household of George III, and the son, having shown an aptitude for music, became a chorister, first at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, then the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace in London. He abandoned music for painting, however, and in 1821 was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy, exhibiting, in 1824, portraits of "Mrs Robinson and Family." In the following year he won first prize in the school of painting. In Sickness and Health (1843)In 1825, also, Webster exhibited 'Rebels shooting a Prisoner,' at the Suffolk Street Gallery - the first of a series of pictures of schoolboy life for which he subsequently became known - . In 1828 he exhibited 'The gunpowder Plot' at the Royal Academy, and in 1829 'The Prisoner' and 'A Foraging Party aroused' at the British Institution. These were followed by numerous other pictures of school and village life at both galleries. In 1840 Webster was elected an associate of the Royal Academy (ARA), and in 1846 a Royal Academician (RA) academician. He continued to be a frequent exhibitor till 1876, when he retired from the academy. He exhibited his own portrait in 1878, and 'Released from School,' his last picture, in 1879. In 1856 Webster was photographed at 'The Photographic Institute', London, by Robert Howlett, as part of a series of portraits of 'fine artists'. The picture was among a group exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester in 1857. From 1835 to 1856 Webster resided at The Mall, Kensington, but the last thirty years of his life were spent at the artists' colony in Cranbrook, Kent, where he died on 23 Sept. 1886.
MEI, Bernardino
Italian painter, Roman school (b. 1612, Siena, d. 1676, Roma) Italian painter, draughtsman and printmaker. His early art drew on a variety of sources, which included the naturalism of Rutilio Manetti and Francesco Rustici, the descriptive realism of the engraver Giuliano Periccioli (d 1646) and the Baroque of Raffaelle Vanni. Mei's interests even embraced 16th-century Sienese art. This stylistic variety is evident in his first known works, such as a bier (Casole d'Elsa, Collegiata), three signed miniatures in the Libro dei leoni (1634; Siena, Pal. Piccolomini, Archv Stato) and frescoes of scenes from the Life of St Bernard (1639; Siena, oratory of S Bernardino). His experimental approach is also displayed in such works as the Annunciation (Siena, Mus. Semin. Montarioso), which may be dated between the mid-1630s and the early 1640s. Mei's early maturity is marked by a conscious return to the naturalism of Manetti, enriched with a Baroque pathos and soft, fluid brushwork, as in the St Peter in Prison Awoken by the Angel and St Peter Freed by the Angel (both Siena; Conservatori Femminili Riuniti). His interest in both naturalism and the Baroque made him responsive to the art of Mattia Preti, possibly seen in Rome, as in the Beheading of St John the Baptist (1647; Siena, oratory of S Giovannino in Pantaneto) and the frescoes of scenes from the Life of St Roch and Life of St Job (1648; Siena, S Rocco),