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 :. | legend of the true cross | the legend of the true cross, detail | Federico di Montefeltro | the resurrection | Polyptych of the Misericordia |
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Hugh Bolton Jones
American Painter, 1848-1927
Joseph von Fuhrich
(February 9, 1800 - March 13, 1876), Austrian painter, was born at Kratzau in Bohemia. Also known as Josef Ritter von F??hrich. Deeply impressed as a boy by rustic pictures adorning the wayside chapels of his native country, his first attempt at composition was a sketch of the Nativity for the festival of Christmas in his father's house. He lived to see the day when, becoming celebrated as a composer of scriptural episodes, his sacred subjects were transferred in numberless repetitions to the roadside churches of the Austrian state, where humble peasants thus learnt to admire modern art reviving the models of earlier ages. Fehrich has been fairly described as a Nazarene, a romantic religious artist whose pencil did more than any other to restore the old spirit of D??rer and give new shape to countless incidents of the gospel and scriptural legends. Without the power of Cornelius or the grace of Overbeck, he composed with great skill, especially in outline. His mastery of distribution, form, movement and expression was considerable. In its peculiar way his drapery was perfectly cast.
Joseph Raphael
1869-1950 Joseph Morris Raphael holds a high place in the California, American and French Schools of Impressionism. Born in the town of Jackson, California on June 2, 1869, Raphael became one of the most famous students of his esteemed teacher Arthur F. Mathews at the California School of Design. Later Raphael would continue his art studies in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and at the Academie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens. Early in his career he made the decision to settle in Europe in Uccle, Belgium where he and his wife established a home and raised their family. For most of his career he remained a devoted follower of pure French Impressionism. He painted the countryside near his home in Uccle, Belgium and also ventured to Holland and France to paint. Just as Raphael's international reputation grew, his family grew as well to include four daughters and one son. His family frequently appeared in his figurative works, he created wonderful closeup studies of his children and frequently captured them in leisurely picnic settings. Other paintings featured local landscapes, and sometimes his charming cottage home with its vegetable and flower gardens which were perhaps a source for his still lifes of fruits, vegetables and flowers. He lived and worked in Europe for thirty-seven years always maintaining close ties with the San Francisco art community and his loyal art dealer and collector Albert M. Bender. In 1939 with the ominous clouds of World War Two approaching, he wisely chose to return to San Francisco where he lived and maintained a studio on Sutter Street until his death on December 11th, 1950.