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 :. | the resurrection | Carrying the Sacred Wood | polyptych of the misericordia | st francis, polyptych of the misericordia | Die Konigin von Saba betet das Kreuzesholz an |
Related Artists:
Frederick Goodall,R.A
1822-1904 Painter, son of (1) Edward Goodall. He was taught by his father and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1838. His earliest subjects were rural genre scenes and landscapes, many derived from sketching trips made between 1838 and 1857 in Normandy, Brittany, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Venice. In the 1850s he also painted subjects from British history. More significant for his subsequent career was his visit to Egypt from September 1858 to April 1859. In Cairo he lived in a house in the Coptic quarter with Carl Haag. Together the two artists went on expeditions to Giza to draw the Nile, the Sphinx and Pyramids, and to Suez and across the Red Sea to the Wells of Moses at 'Uy?n M?sa. Goodall also made rapid sketches in the crowded streets of Cairo. 'My sole object in paying my first visit to Egypt', he wrote, 'was to paint Scriptural subjects' (Reminiscences, p. 97). The first of these, Early Morning in the Wilderness of Shur (London, Guildhall A.G.), was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860 and won him critical and popular acclaim. In 1864 he was elected RA. Much of the rest of Goodall's long career was devoted to painting similar scenes of Egyptian life with biblical associations, for which he made reference to his sketches and to Egyptian artefacts and clothing.
Giovanni Battista Crespi
Giovanni Battista Crespi (23 December 1573 - 23 October 1632), called Il Cerano, was an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect. He was born in Romagnano Sesia, the son of a painter, Raffaele Crespi, and moved to Cerano with his family some years later. In 1591 he is known to have been living in Milan. True to the Counter-Reformation piety zealously expressed in Milanese art of his time, his paintings focus on mysteries and mystical episodes in saintly life. The crowded canvases and the angles recall Mannerism, but his paintings show an emotion that evokes common sentiments in Baroque art. Along with other artists, he completed a series of paintings (Quadroni of St. Charles) of the life of St. Charles Borromeo[1] for the Duomo of Milan, an altarpiece with the Baptism of St. Augustine for San Marco (Milan), and a Mass of St. Gregory for the Basilica of San Vittore in Varese (1615-17). Also see the nightmarish, St. Gregory Delivers the Soul of a Monk (1617), also in San Vittore.
Edmund Blair Leighton
1853-1922 British Leighton was the son of the artist Charles Blair Leighton. He was educated at University College School, before becoming a student at the Royal Academy Schools. He married Katherine Nash in 1885 and they went on to have a son and daughter. He exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1920. Leighton was a fastidious craftsman, producing highly-finished, decorative pictures. It would appear that he left no diaries, and though he exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, he was never an Academician or an Associate.