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 :. | Nativity | Madonna and Child Attended by Angels | polyptych of saint anthony | The Fresco Cycle | Detail of Baptism of Christ |
Related Artists:
Jacob Duck
1600-1667 Dutch Jacob Duck Location Dutch painter and etcher. He was long confused with Jan le Ducq (1629/30-76). In 1621 he was listed as an apprentice portrait painter in the records of the Utrecht Guild of St Luke. His teacher was probably Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (1586-1666). The St Job Hospital in Utrecht acquired a Musical Company by him in 1629. By 1630-32 he was a master in the guild. Like Pieter Codde, he painted guardroom scenes (kortegaerdjes), for example Soldiers Arming Themselves (c. 1635; New York, H. Shickman Gal., see 1984 exh. cat., no. 36) or the Hoard of Booty (Paris, Louvre), in which the figures and their interactions are apparently full of underlying symbolic meaning. He also painted merry companies (e.g. c. 1630; Names, Mus. B.-A.) and domestic activities, such as Woman Ironing (Utrecht, Cent. Mus.), employing motifs perhaps symbolic of domestic virtue. He placed his figures in high, bare interiors in which the deep local colours of the foreground stand out well against the cool, greyish-brown background. Only a few of his etchings are known (Hollstein, Dut. & Flem., vi, pp. 9-11), depicting figures in contemporary dress, for example Young Gentleman with Broad Hat and Cloak (Hollstein, no. 10) or Virgin and Child with Magi (nos 1-4). Between 1631 and 1649 Duck presence is documented in Utrecht, Haarlem and Wijk bij Duurstede. Afterwards, and probably by 1656, he was living in The Hague. He was buried at the monastery of St Mary Magdalene in Utrecht.
Bernardino Licinio
(c. 1489 - 1565) was an Italian High Renaissance painter of Venice and Lombardy. Born in Poscante (Bergamo). He mainly painted portraits and religious canvases.
Hugo Salmson
1843-1894