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 :. | Head of an Angel | the legend of the true cross, detail | Portrait of Battista Sforza | The Fresco Cycle | Polyptych of the Misericordia |
Related Artists:
David van der Plas
David van der Plas (1647-1704), was a Dutch Golden Age portrait painter. David van der Plas became famous as a portrait painter, and his most illustrious patron was Cornelis Tromp. In 1684 he married Cornelia van der Gon of Haarlem, the daughter of the castellan (kastelein) of the Oude Doelen, the meeting quarters of the Haarlem schutterij (the building currently houses the Stadsbibliotheek Haarlem). David van der Plas' brother-in-law was the painter Govert van der Leeuw and his pupil was Jacob Appel. His wife Cornelia van der Gon was the rich heiress of the Amsterdam architect Adriaan Dortsman (ca. 1636-1682), who designed the round Lutheran church on the Singel. The marriage was childless, and Cornelia spent her time on her doll houses, which Dortsman had helped design and which Van der Plas helped decorate. The landscape painter Jan Wijnants also painted miniatures for these doll houses. Cornelia died in 1701, and after the death of Van der Plas, the doll houses were sold at auction to Sara Rothe, who used them to decorate her own doll houses.
Moser, Lukas
German Painter, 1390-ca.1434
Francesco Vanni
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1563-1610 was an Italian painter of the Mannerist style, active in Rome and his native city of Siena. He was half-brother of the painter Ventura Salimbeni, and the stepson of Arcangelo Salimbeni, another Sienese painter. His stepfather died when Francesco was young, and as a 16 year old went first to Bologna, then to Rome. There he apprenticed with Giovanni de' Vecchi during 1579-80, though like other Tuscan painters of his day, he was influenced in part by Federico Barocci from Urbino, and he was among the last painters who also reflected the influence of the Sienese School of painting. He was named a Cavalieri. In Rome, he worked later with Salimbeni, Bartolomeo Passerotti, and Andrea Lilio. He was commissioned by Pope Clement VIII to painted an altarpiece for the St. Peter's, later transferred to mosaic, Simon Magus rebuked by St. Peter. He painted several other pictures for Roman churches; including St. Michael defeats rebel angels for the sacristy of S. Gregorio; a Piet?? for Santa Maria in Vallicella; and the Assumption for S. Lorenzo in Miranda. Returning to Siena, where he ultimately died, he afterwards worked at Parma, Bologna, and again at Rome. At Siena, he painted a S. Raimondo walking on the Sea for the church of the Dominicans. Vanni painted a Baptism of Constantine (1586-7) for the church of San Agostino in Siena. He painted a Christ appearing to St. Catherine for the chapel of il Refugio at the Santuario Cateriniano of Siena, and a Baptism (1587) for the former church of San Giovannino e Gennaro.