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 :. | Augustinian monk | The Duke of Urbino | the legend of the true cross, detail | the montefeltro altarpiece, details | Exaltation of the Cross |
Related Artists:
DOU, Gerrit
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1613-1675 Dutch painter. The first and most famous member of the group of artists referred to as the LEIDEN 'FINE' PAINTERS, he specialized in small-format paintings, the details and surfaces of which are carefully observed and meticulously rendered. He was greatly praised as a painter of artificial light by Samuel van Hoogstraten in 1678, and he was responsible for popularizing both the night scene and the 'niche' format, pictorial devices ultimately derived from the art of his famous master, Rembrandt.
Gioacchino Toma
Italian , Galatina 1836 - Napoli 1891 Italian painter. He was orphaned at the age of six and spent an unhappy childhood and adolescence in convents and poorhouses; these experiences would later provide subjects for his paintings. He was first taught drawing at the art school in the hospice for the poor in the Adriatic town of Giovinazzo, but in 1855 he moved to Naples, where he worked for an ornamental painter named Alessandro Fergola. In 1857 he was mistakenly arrested for conspiracy and exiled to Piedimonte d'Alife, 60 km from Naples, where he was initiated into the secret society of the Carbonari by some local liberal aristocrats who also became his first patrons. His paintings for them were mainly still-lifes, largely in the traditional Neapolitan style. On his return to Naples in 1858 he became a student at the Accademia di Belle Arti, attending the classes of Domenico Morelli, who influenced such early works as Erminia (1859; Naples, Pal. Reale). Toma fought for two years with Garibaldi in the campaign for the unification of Italy, then returned to painting,
Thomas Somerscales
English painter, 1842-1927