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 | Geburt Christi | polyptych of saint augustine | the legend of the true cross, detail | Polyptych of the Misericordia: Sts Andrew and Bernardino |
Related Artists:
Lucas de Heere
1534-1584,Painter, tapestry designer, draughtsman and poet. He was probably trained by his parents. The suggestion that he became a member of the Ghent Guild of St Luke before 1540 was derived from an incorrect interpretation of the Guild records for 1574-5. Van Mander recorded that, as a boy, de Heere accompanied his father on his trips to the stone-quarries of the Meuse region, where he made topographical drawings. Lucas was sent to Frans Floris's studio c. 1555 or shortly before to complete his training, and he may have collaborated with his master on tapestry cartoons and stained-glass designs, although no cartoons or preparatory drawings survive. During this period de Heere also became noted as a poet in the local rhetoricians' chambers. His father's influence helped him to gain commissions in Ghent from 1555, and, according to Marcus van Vaernewijck (1568), he worked on new stained-glass windows for the St Janskerk in Ghent in the same year.
Pietro Da Rimini
active in the first half of the fourteenth century
Valentin Serov
Russian Impressionist Painter, 1865-1911