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 Baptism of Christ | the legend of the true cross, detail | detail of the dogs from st sigismund and sigismondo pandolfo malatesta | Augustinian monk | Nativity |
Related Artists:
CLEVE, Cornelis van
Flemish painter, Antwerp school (b. 1520, Antwerpen, d. after 1570, Antwerpen).
Cornelis Bisschop
In ca. 1650 he was a student of Ferdinand Bol in Amsterdam. In 1653 he was back in Dordrecht, where he got married. According to Houbraken he was the first to paint carved trompe l'oeil wooden panels in such an ingenious way that they became quite popular. He painted historical allegories, portraits, still lifes, and genre-works. He was asked to paint for the Danish court, but he died unexpectedly, leaving his wife and eleven children. Of these children, two sons (Abraham (1660-1700) & Jacobus Bisschop (1658-1698)) and three daughters became painters. These had been his students when he died, and Margaretha van Godewijk studied with his daughters. She wrote an emblem about his self-portrait with a curtain, which illustrates the legend of Zeuxis. His son Jacobus later became a student of Augustinus Terwesten in the Confrerie Pictura
James Peele
James Peale (1749 - May 24, 1831) was an American painter, best known for his miniature and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted painter Charles Willson Peale. Peale was born in Chestertown, Maryland, the second child, after Charles, of Charles Peale (1709 - 1750) and Margaret Triggs (1709 - 1791). His father died when he was an infant, and the family moved to Annapolis. In 1762 he began to serve apprenticeships there, first in a saddlery and later in a cabinetmaking shop. After his brother Charles returned from London in 1769, where he had studied with Benjamin West, Peale served as his assistant and learned how to paint. Peale worked in his brother's studio until January 14, 1776, when he accepted a commission in the Continental Army as an ensign in William Smallwood's regiment. Within three months he was promoted to captain, and during the next three years fought in the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown, Princeton, and Monmouth. He resigned his army commission in 1779, and moved to Philadelphia to live with his brother. In 1782 he married, after which he established his own household and artistic career. (One notable later collaboration, however, was in 1788 to make floats for Philadelphia's Federal Procession in honor of the newly drafted United States Constitution.)