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 :. | St Jerome and a Donor | madonna and chold enthroned between four angels | Adoration of the Holy Wood and the Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba | saint mary magdalen | the legend of the true cross, detail |
Related Artists:
Boccaccio Boccaccino
(c. 1467 - c. 1525) was a painter of the early Italian Renaissance, belonging to the Emilian school. He is profiled in Vasari's Le Vite delle pie eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (or, in English, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects). He was born in Ferrara and studied there, probably under Domenico Panetti. Few facts of his life are known. His principal artistic activity was in Venice, Ferrara, and especially in Cremona, where he founded a school in which Garofalo was a pupil. His most celebrated achievement is the frescoes in the Cathedral of Cremona (1506-1519) representing the Birth of the Virgin and some subjects from her life. His position there was taken over by Altobello Melone. His remaining works, which include the Marriage of Saint Catherine (Accademia), the Virgin and Child with Four Saints (Venice, San Giuliano), the Virgin and Two Saints (Cremona, San Quirilo), and the Holy Family (Paris, Louvre), are considered by Lanzi remarkable for richness of drapery, variety of color, spirit and grace of attitude, and harmony of landscape. Several works formerly attributed to Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Garofalo are now ascribed to Boccaccino. His son and pupil Camillo Boccaccino (1501-46) was a painter at Cremona.
Hirst, Claude Raguet
American Painter, 1855-1942
George Hicks
British 1824-1914