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 Penance of St. Jerome | Discovery and Proof of the True Cross | porteait de sigismond malatesta | detail of the castle from st sigismund and sigismondo | Madonna and Child Attended by Angels |
Related Artists:
George Barret
(1728 - 1784) British
Cosme Tura
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1430-1495 Italian Renaissance artist. He was a leading master of the school of Ferrara and court painter to the city's ruling Este family. Often vividly emotional, Tura's figures range from the graceful to the grotesque, as in the gentle Mary and contorted Jesus of his c.1472 Pieta (Correr Museum, Venice). Combining material splendor with asceticism, his stylistically idiosyncratic paintings are frequently filled with sharply portrayed natural details??diversified landscapes, squirrels, monkeys, fruits, etc.??that serve as both plastic and iconographic elements. His works are executed in a harsh, nervously linear, and rather angular style, with bold and sometimes strident coloring. Examples of his art include two organ panels, Annunciation and St. George Slaying the Dragon (cathedral, Ferrara); Christ on the Cross (Milan); St. Jerome (National Gall., London); Portrait of a Man and Saints (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.). Attributed to him is a portrait of a member of the Este family, The Flight into Egypt, and St. Louis of Toulouse
Jean-Jacques Henner
1829-1905 French Jean Jacques Henner Galleries French painter. He was born into a peasant family in the Sundgau and received his first artistic training at Altkirch with Charles Goutzwiller (1810-1900) and later in Strasbourg in the studio of Gabriel-Christophe Gu?rin (1790-1846). In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a pupil of Michel-Martin Drolling and, from 1851, of Francois-Edouard Picot. While a student he was particularly drawn to portraiture, and during his frequent visits to Alsace he made portraits of his family as well as of the notables of the region. He also painted scenes of Alsatian peasant life.