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 legend of the true cross, detail | Crucifixion | Death of Adam | Head of an Angel | Polyptych of Saint Augustine fy |
Related Artists:
Abbey, Edwin Austin
American Golden Age Illustrator and Muralist, 1852-1911 American painter and illustrator, active in England. He began his artistic training in 1866, studying drawing with the Philadelphia portrait and landscape painter Isaac L. Williams (1817-95). In 1868 he attended evening classes in drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Christian Schussele (1824-79). In the same year Abbey began to work as an illustrator for the Philadelphia publishers Van Ingen & Snyder. In 1870 Harper's Weekly published the Puritans' First Thanksgiving, and in 1871 Abbey moved to New York to join the staff of Harper & Brothers, thus inaugurating his most important professional relationship. Throughout the 1870s Abbey's reputation grew, both for his detailed exhibition watercolours and for his elegant line drawings, which, translated to wood-engravings in numerous periodicals, illustrated both factual and fictional events of the past and present. The influences on him were mainly English, in particular the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and illustrations in the English press, which he studied avidly. The success of his illustrations to some of Robert Herrick's poems, such as Corinna's Going A-Maying in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (May 1874), prompted Harper & Brothers in 1878 to send Abbey to England to do a complete series of drawings for an illustrated gift-book, Selections from the Poetry of Robert Herrick (New York, 1882).
Felice Ficherelli
Italian painter , b. 1603, San Gimignano, d. 1660, Firenze Firenze,Italian painter. His most original works were easel pictures, for private collectors, often of cruel and violent subjects, which he interpreted with a morbid sensuality and ambiguous tenderness. He was brought to Florence when very young by the collector Conte Alberto Bardi (d 1632), who arranged for him to study with Jacopo da Empoli and to copy works by Andrea del Sarto. Ficherelli's clear compositions and luminous drapery, which remain evident throughout his career, reflect this training. In the early 1630s he was attracted by the delicate sfumato effects of Francesco Furini and developed a style close to that of Cecco Bravo; his works of this period include the Sacrifice of Isaac (Florence, priv. col., for illustration see Gregori, 1968, p. 26) and the Martyrdom of St Agatha (priv. col., see Cantelli, fig. 338). There followed in the late 1630s Tarquin and Lucretia, which is known in several versions (e.g. Rome, Accad. N. S Luca), the theatrical Julia Receiving the Bloodstained Garments of Pompey (Genoa, priv. col., see 1986 exh. cat., pl. 1.208), an Allegory of Patience (Florence, Bigongiari priv. col., see Gregori, 1974, fig. 23) and Antiochus and Stratonica (Auckland, C.A.G.).
Peter Tillemans
Flemish Painter, ca.1684-1734 was a Flemish painter, best known for his works on sporting and topographical subjects. Alongside John Wootton and James Seymour, he was one of the founders of the English school of sporting painting. From 1708 until his death he lived and worked in England. Tillemans was born in Antwerp in c. 1684, the son of a diamond-cutter, and studied painting there under various masters. As he was the brother-in-law of another Flemish painter, Pieter Casteels, it is assumed that he married before leaving Antwerp. Like other artists from the Low Countries such as Dirk Maas, Jan Wyck and William van de Velde, Tillemans moved to England. In Tillemans's case he moved in 1708, induced to do so by a picture-dealer called Turner: he spent the rest of his life working there. In his Sportsmen in a Landscape (1971), Aubrey Noakes offers this description of Tillemans: If we may judge from his success Tillemans was a socially agreeable and charming man. A portrait of him reveals that he was a gentle, friendly-looking fellow, with long curling hair, presumably his own and not a wig, such as was commonly worn by members of the upper and professional classes in the late eighteenth century. A chronic sufferer of asthma, Tillemans retired to Richmond "on account of his ill state of health". He died at the house of Dr Cox Macro (1683?C1767, later chaplain to George II) in Little Haugh Hall, in Suffolk, on 5 December 1734 (the previous day he "had been busy on a horse portrait") and was buried on 7 December at Stowlangtoft. His collection of paintings had been sold in an auction conducted by Dr Macro on 19 and 20 April 1733 and included paintings by James Tillemans, probably a son or other relation,