Uccello, Paolo (Paolo di Dono) (1397–1475) Italian
painter
A Florentine by birth, Uccello was praised by Cristoforo
LANDINOin 1481 for his skill in foreshortening and for his
understanding of the technique of PERSPECTIVE. Uccello’s
few surviving works demonstrate an interest in the inno-
vations of early Quattrocento artists, especially foreshort-
ening and BRUNELLESCHI’s scientific perspective, but
united with a strong personal taste for decorative patterns
and repeated colors.
Uccello is documented as a youthful assistant to GHIB-
ERTIin the workshop creating the north doors for the Flo-
rentine Baptistery; he was admitted as a painter to the
Compagnia di San Luca in 1414 and the Arte dei Medici e
Speziali in 1415, and worked as a mosaicist at San Marco
in Venice in the late 1420s. His stylistic development
is exemplified in the terra verde Old Testament frescoes
of the cloister of Sta. Maria Novella, Florence, which
were executed in two campaigns; the earlier paintings
(c. 1420s) are still in the International Gothic style,
while the later Flood (c. 1440s) demonstrates a fascination
with Renaissance perspective, foreshortening, and com-
plex drawing problems that threaten to submerge the
theme.
In 1436 the supervisors of Florence cathedral com-
missioned Uccello to execute a frescoed EQUESTRIAN MON-
UMENTto Sir John Hawkwood (died 1394), the English
condottiere who had been employed by the Florentines;
Uccello had to repaint his first version, perhaps because it
emphasized the foreshortened illusion of the tomb, horse,
and rider, as seen from below, at the expense of the por-
trait. The completed work is ambivalent in viewpoint, but
Uccello’s subtle surface modeling and his application of
geometric shapes to horse and rider alike create a digni-
fied and sculpturesque monument, while the Renaissance
interest in the antique is evident in the influence of the
horses at San Marco, Venice. For Florence cathedral dur-
ing the 1440s Uccello undertook two projects: a frescoed
clockface with four illusionistic Heads of Prophets, and de-
signs for a Nativity and Resurrection for stained glass ron-
dels in the drum of Brunelleschi’s dome in a program that
included designs by ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO, DONATELLO,
and Ghiberti.
Uccello’s St. George and the Dragon (c. 1455; National
Gallery, London) demonstrates how his interest in certain
aspects of Renaissance science and his lively imagination
could together produce a charming fantasy (see Plate
VIII); it can be related to Landino’s praise of Uccello as “a
great master of animals and landscape,” as can A Hunt in a
Forest (c. 1460; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Uccello’s
three large panels of the Battle of San Romano (before
1456; Uffizi, Florence; National Gallery, London; Louvre,
Paris) were painted for the Medici palace, perhaps as dec-
oration for the bedroom of the young Lorenzo de’ Medici,
who was born in 1449. They honor a victory of 1432 won
by a Medici general, Niccolò da Tolentino, but the content
is less militaristic than decorative; they offer a delight
in patterns of form and color especially appropriate for a
secular decoration. Uccello’s demonstration of how to rep-
resent horses, men, and military equipment in foreshort-
ening is impressive, but the poor state of preservation of
the paintings had simplified the once subtle modeling.
VASARIreported that Uccello was so enamored of fore-
shortening that, when his wife called him to bed, she
would find him muttering, “Oh what a delightful thing is
perspective.”
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