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 :. | saint julian | polyptych of saint anthony | Madonna and Child Attended by Angels | details from the baptism of chist | the legend of the true cross, detail |
Related Artists:
John O Brien Inman
American, 1828-1896
PROCACCINI, Giulio Cesare
Italian Baroque Era Painter and Sculptor, 1574-1625 ..Painter and sculptor, son of Ercole Procaccini. Having moved to Milan with the rest of the family in the mid-1580s, he trained as a sculptor, perhaps in the workshop of Francesco Brambilla, and then worked (1591-9) for the workshop of Milan Cathedral. The results of this work are difficult to identify, and the most secure attribution is the left term on the altar of St Joseph. There followed a period (1597-1602) of intense sculptural activity for the church of S Maria presso S Celso, for the fa?ade of which he executed two high reliefs in marble, the Visitation and Birth of the Virgin. In 1597 he may have accompanied his brother Camillo to Reggio Emilia, where Camillo added to his earlier fresco decorations for S Prospero. Between 1597 and 1600 Giulio Cesare is documented as working as a sculptor for Cremona Cathedral, to which two sculptures, St Matthew and St John, were delivered, after many delays, in 1625. He also produced the gilded wood Guardian Angel (1597; Cremona, Mus. Civ. Ala Ponzone) for S Monica, Cremona. From Cremona he travelled to Parma,
Aurelio de Beruete
1845-1912