Paolo Uccello

(Italian, 1397–1475)

Paolo Uccello was an important Italian artist of the Early Renaissance known for his pioneering use of perspective. Bridging the transition from the decorative Late Gothic style of the Middle Ages to the naturalism of the Renaissance, his paintings are marked by their interlocking forms, bright colors, and complex compositions. The Battle of San Romano (1435–1460), is a hallmark example of the painter’s ability to produce a pictorial space in which multiple dynamic forms exist on the same plane. Born Paolo di Dono in 1397 in Pratovecchio, Italy, he apprenticed with the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti from 1412 to 1416, during which time he befriended the artist Donatello. Joining a guild of painters around the same time, he began producing frescoes for churches in Florence. It was his fondness for painting animals, especially birds, which led to his nickname of uccello (bird). Over the following decades, the artist produced a number of important commissions for the Medici family as well as churches around Italy. Uccello died on December 10, 1475 in Florence, Italy. His rigorous experimentations with perspective and foreshortening served as examples for many painters to follow, including Piero della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albrecht Dürer, among others. Today, his works are held in the collections of the National Gallery in London, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.