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 | The Flagellation | Augustinian nun | the legend of the true cross, detail | Portrat of duke Frederico there Montefello |
Related Artists:
Hiram Powers
American Neoclassical Sculptor, 1805-1873, American sculptor. He grew up in Cincinnati, OH, and his career as a sculptor began when he created animated wax figures for a tableau of Dante's Inferno at Dorfeuille's Western Museum in Cincinnati, where he was supervisor of the mechanical department. He learnt to model clay and make plaster casts from Frederick Eckstein (c. 1775-1852). The portrait busts he created of his friends attracted the attention of the wealthy Nicholas Longworth, who financed trips for Powers to New York in 1829 and to Washington, DC, in 1834, when he sculpted President Andrew Jackson (marble, c. 1835; New York, Met.). Powers's strikingly lifelike bust, classicized only by the drapery, brought him commissions from other Washington luminaries, including John Marshall (marble, 1835; Washington, DC, US Capitol), Martin van Buren (marble, 1837; New York, NY Hist. Soc.)
Marten van Cleve
Flemish, 1527-1581,Brother of Hendrik van Cleve III. His presumed date of birth is derived from a document of 2 April 1567 in which he declared his age to be 40. In 1551-2 he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke and, according to van Mander, followed his brother into the studio of Frans Floris. If this is correct, it was probably c. 1553-5, for motifs drawn from Floris's work appear in Marten van Cleve's paintings executed during these years. Marten married Maria de Greve on 7 January 1556, apparently setting up his own studio at about the same time. Apprentices are regularly recorded from 1558 onwards, and it is probable that his own sons, Gillis II, Marten the younger, Joris and Nicolaas, also worked in the studio. Throughout the 1560s and 1570s Marten van Cleve's workshop was very productive, but the majority of works painted consisted of copies of his own originals. Van Mander's statement that the artist collaborated with a number of landscape painters, including his brother Hendrik III, Gillis van Coninxloo III, Gillis Mostaert and Jacob Grimmer, is confirmed by 17th-century inventories.
Pryanishnikov Illarion
1840-1894,Russian painter. He studied from 1856 to 1866 at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow and subsequently taught there (1873-94). Among his pupils were Sergey Ivanov and Sergey Korovin. Pryanishnikov was among the fifteen founder-members of the Peredvizhniki (WANDERERS) and contributed two works to their first exhibition. His narrative pictures of the 1860s embodied the critical trend in early Russian Realism and focused on the trials and sorrows of the lower classes; his Jokers (1865; Moscow, Tret yakov Gal.) shows a petty clerk performing stunts for the amusement of some wealthy merchants. The Convoy of Empty Sleds (1871; Kharkiv, Mus. F.A.) conveys a fine sense of the bleak winter landscape. His later work added northern scenery and genre scenes to his repertory as in Saviour Day in the North (1887; Moscow, Tret yakov Gal.) and Return from the Fair (1883; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.). Pryanishnikov is also known for his hunting scenes. In 1893 he became a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts.