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 :. | Burial of the Wood | the legend of the true cross, detail | Detail of Baptism of Christ | the legend of the true cross, detail | the legend of the true cross, detail |
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VOS, Marten de
Flemish painter (b. 1532, Antwerpen, d. 1603, Antwerpen). Flemish painter and draughtsman. Together with the brothers Ambrosius Francken I and Frans Francken I, he ranks among the most important painters of altarpieces in Antwerp during the 1590s. Due, in part, to the Counter-Reformation, there was a renewed demand for altarpieces to replace those lost during iconoclastic riots in 1566 or the reformist movement of 1581. De Vos produced works for, among others, the Old Crossbowmen, the Brabant Coiners, the Antonites, the wine merchants and the Guild of St Luke. The importance of these works would seem to suggest that, after the deaths of Pieter Bruegel I in 1569 and Frans Floris in 1570, de Vos was considered, with some justification, the most important figure painter in Antwerp before Rubens. He was also a prolific draughtsman, especially during the first half of the 1580s, when the Calvinists were in power in Antwerp. During this period he provided numerous designs for print publishers, such as Peeter Baltens, Frans van Beusecom, the widow of Hieronymus Cock, Adriaen Collaert, Phillip Galle, Willem van Haecht, Eduard van Hoeswinkel, Gerard de Jode, Hans van Luyck and Johannes Baptista Vrints. This increased activity is probably indicative of the economic recession and a dwindling market for paintings (especially of religious themes). A total of some 1600 prints were produced after designs by de Vos, an output three times that of Maarten van Heemskerck. De Vos's drawings have been praised (see Mielke) for their lively,
Pietro Lorenzetti
Italian Byzantine Style Painter, ca.1280-1348
Mount, Shepard Alonzo
American Painter, 1804-1868