Peruzzi Baldassare (1481 —1536). Italian architect and painter. He was born near Siena but came to Rome in 1503 and designed the Farnesina — a simple facade with pilasters, the attic-storey made into a sculptured frieze with oval windows; inside P. painted *trompe l'ail frescoes (the ground-floor was decorated by Raphael). He was in charge of St Peter's from 1520, but his contribution has been entirely obliterated. He kept Bramante's centralized plan. In 1535 he designed the Palazzo Massimi, Rome, important as marking the development of High Renaissance into Mannerism; significant features are the curved facade, columns on the ground-floor, rusticated stonework above (instead of vice versa) and the complicated shape of the window-frames of the 1st floor. Peterson Denis (born in 1944). Hyperrealism. Petrov-Vodkin Kuzma (1878-1930). Russian painter and an influential teacher. After studying in Moscow under Levitan and Serov he went to Africa, whose art and peculiar light and colour influenced his later work, as did the work of Matisse. He was a member of the *Blue Rose group but later adopted a Neoclassical style; Playing Boys of 1911 is a typical work. Petty George. Pin -Up Art Pevsner Antoine (Noton or Anton) (1886— 1962). Russian painter and sculptor. In 1911 he went to study m Pans, drawn by the new French painting shown in the colls of *Morosov and *Shchukin and the *Golden Fleece exhibitions in Moscow. There he made friends with Modighani and Archipenko. In 1913 P. began to paint in Cubist style; Byzantine art was also fundamental to the development of his later construction-sculpture. On his return to Russia m 1917, P. was appointed professor m Moscow *Vkhutemas. With his brother *Gabo he took a stand against functionalist *Constructivism in 1920, a year later leaving Russia for Berlin where he made his 1st construction, not yet abstract, in celluloid. With Gabo he designed La Chatte in 1927 for Diaghilev. P. settled in Paris, working on progressively more abstract sculpture in bronze and other metals. Pforr Franz (b Frankfurt am Main, 5 April 1788; d Albano, nr Rome, 16 June 1812). German painter and draughtsman. He received his earliest training from his father, the painter Johann Georg Pforr (1745–98), and his uncle, the art professor and first inspector of the painting gallery in Kassel, Johann Heinrich Tischbein the younger (1742–1808). In 1805 he became a student at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, which was dominated by the severe Neo-classicism of its director, Heinrich Füger; he was taught by Hubert Maurer (1738–1818), Franz Cauzig (1762–1828) and Johann Martin Fischer. During the war with France in 1805, Pforr volunteered as a guard in the Vienna militia. He suffered a nervous breakdown, brought on by the conflict between his passionate longing for a contemplative life and a desire to see military action. He probably turned to religion to help sustain his mental equilibrium. In 1806 he resumed his academic studies and, believing himself destined to become a battle painter, made numerous drawings of historical battles, for example his still schoolish and baroquely composed Wallenstein in the Battle of Lützen (1806; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.). However, it was not until 1807, with Drawing with Twelve Travel Sketches (Frankfurt am Main, Stadt- & Ubib.), that he first began to overcome his beginner’s style and to develop his own. This resulted in reduced detail, simplified continuous contours, a structuring by means of planar rather than illusionistic criteria, a new clarity of vision and a chastened balance between nature and artistic conception. Phalanx. Exhibiting society founded by Vasily Kandinsky and others in Munich in 1901 and active until 1904 as an important manifestation of the Jugendstil aesthetic. Founded soon after Kandinsky’s departure from Franz von Stuck’s studio, it was the first group for which he served as the main driving force. The society was advertised in July 1901 in the Munich periodical Kunst für Alle as having ‘set for itself the task of furthering common interests in close association. Above all it intends to help overcome the difficulties that often stand in the way of young artists wishing to exhibit their work.’ The choice of name itself suggested the idea of a close association and also related to the concept of the phalanx propounded by the French philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837) as the basic unit of his Utopian society. This social aspect also reflected the ideas of William Morris and other writers associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement and was an important principle in its structure. The society attempted to redress the sexual inequalities found in the Munich Akademie by allowing men and women equal access to exhibitions and to the school established in the winter of 1901–2 on Kandinsky’s initiative. Phantastischer Realismus [Ger.: ‘fantastic realism’]. Term applied to a group of painters in Vienna, who had met shortly after the end of World War II in the class given by Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in the 1940s. It was first used by the Austrian art critic Johann Muschik in the late 1950s to describe the group, which included Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter (b 1928), Gütersloh’s illegitimate son, and Anton Lehmden (b 1929). Phidias (c 500—c. 432 не:). Greek sculptor and painter, pupil of the sculptors Hegias and Ageladas of Argos (who influenced him in the direction of Doric realism). He is reputed to have painted Pericles as Jupiter but his most important work was in sculpture for the Acropolis, including a state of Athena and the Athena Chryselephantine for the interior of the Parthenon, and much of the subsidiary sculpture. P. also carved the statue of Zeus at Olympus, whither he may have moved after being accused in Athens of embezzling the precious metals he used for his major works. This statue in gold and ivory was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Philippe Paul. Art Deco Phillips Ammi (1787/8—1865). U.S. primitive artist. More than 200 portraits survive; varied yet characteristic in style they include the starkly powerful Joseph Slade (1816) Phillips Peter (1939- ). British *Pop art painter. He studied at the Royal College of Art (1959—61) at the same time as *Hockney, *Jones and *Kitaj, all of whose work emerged decisively at the 'Young Contemporaries' exhibition (1961). P., in his flatly painted and complex structured paintings, integrates images of cars, pin-ups, pop stars, leather jackets, comics and pinball machines (e.g. Distributor, 1962, Custom Painting No. 3, 1964—5). Phillips Richard [American Photorealist Painter, born in 1962] Philoxenos (fl. early 4th с BC). Greek painter known for his painting of the battle of Issus, of which the *Alexander mosaic may be a copy. Photography. Term used to describe the technique of producing an image by the action of light on a chemically prepared material. Although used privately as early as 1833, it was not until the public discussion of the first processes in 1839 that the term popularly attributed to Sir John Herschel came to be used in its present general sense. Photo League. American organization of photographers founded in New York in 1936. It was an offshoot of the earlier radical Film and Photo League, and its members were dedicated to urban social imagery. At first they saw the camera as a weapon in the social and political struggles of the time, but towards the end of the 1930s their outlook broadened, although they remained strongly committed to documentary photography. Photo League members later included many renowned photographers whose only common bond was their devotion to the medium as an expressive visual form Photomontage. Although the manipulation of the photograph is as old as photography itself, the term was first used soon after World War I, invented by the Berlin *Dadaists *Hausmann, *Grosz, *Baader and *Hoch. P. has since had a continuous history both as an art form and in graphic design. It involves the pasting together of *readymade photographic images, often of machines, together with newspaper and magazine cuttings, and typography. More recently the term has been used in connection with the manipulation of photographic processes, darkroom techniques and printing. Photomontage. Technique by which a composite photographic image is formed by combining images from separate photographic sources. The term was coined by Berlin Dadaists c. 1918 and was employed by artists such as George Grosz, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch for images often composed from mass-produced sources such as newspapers and magazines. Photo Realism. *Super Realism Photorealism [Hyper Realism; Super Realism]. Style of painting, printmaking and sculpture that originated in the USA in the mid-1960s, involving the precise reproduction of a photograph in paint or the mimicking of real objects in sculpture. Its pioneers included the painters Malcolm Morley, Chuck Close, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack (b 1931), Robert Bechtle (b 1932), Robert Cottingham (b 1935), Richard McLean (b 1934), Don Eddy and the English painter John Salt (b 1937), and sculptors such as Duane Hanson and John De Andrea. Though essentially an American movement, it has also had exponents in Europe, such as Franz Gertsch. Photo-Secession. Group of mainly American Pictorialist photographers founded by ALFRED STIEGLITZ in New York in 1902, with the aim of advancing photography as a fine art. Stieglitz, who chose the organization’s name partly to reflect the Modernism of European artistic Secession movements, remained its guiding spirit. Other leading members included Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen and Clarence H. White. The Secession also exhibited and published work by Europeans, for example Robert Demachy, Frederick H. Evans, Heinrich Kühn and Baron Adolf de Meyer, who shared the Americans’ attitude that photography was a valid medium of artistic expression. Piazzetta Giovanni Battista (1682-1754). Venetian painter, the pupil of Antonio Molinari he came under the influence of Guercino when working in Bologna. P. returned to Venice as director of the Venetian Academy in 1760. Among his best works are The Standard Bearer and The Fortune Teller. His work formed a link between that of Caliari and Tiepolo and can be seen in the churches of SS Giovanni e Paolo and at the Santo in Padua. He also did outstanding drawings and ills. Picabia Francis (1879—1953). Paris-born painter. After an early Post-Impressionist phase, he became involved successively with *Cubism, *Orphism and *Futurism, but is most significant as a pioneer of *Dada in Paris. Working with Duchamp, whom he met in 1910, he was also responsible for the passage of Dada to N.Y., where he ed. the Dada magazines 291 and 391. He joined *Tzara, *Arp and the Zurich Dadaists in 1918 and from 1920, in contact with *Breton, was active as a *Surrealist. His best early works are in the Cubist idiom, e.g. Undine (1913). Many of his Dada collages and constructions parody machinery, e.g. Parade Amoureuse (1917). Picasso Pablo Ruiz (1881-1973). Spanish painter, sculptor, draughtsman, graphic and stage designer, and ceramicist, born m Malaga, Andalusia. The indisputable genius of 20th-c. art, P., like Michelangelo whom he in some ways emulated, stands as one of a handful of the most important artists in the whole history of Western art. Encouraged by his father Jose Ruiz Blasco, an artist and teacher of art, P. studied principally in Barcelona where he mostly lived (1896-1904). Until 1898 P. signed his pictures with his father's name, Ruiz, as well as his mother's, Picasso. In 1898—9 he began occasionally using only his mother's name and from 1900—1 he dropped his father's name. He 1st visited Paris in 1900, then in 1901 and 1902, and 1904. He showed prodigious artistic ability from his youth, e.g. Man in a Gap (1895) and Portrait of the Artist's Sister (1 899). In 1900, the year of his 1st visit to Paris, he was deeply impressed by *Toulouse-Lautrec, *Gauguin and Van *Gogh, while retaining what he had learnt m his native country from El *Greco, *Velazquez and *Goya. Le Moulin de la Galette (1900), probably his 1st painting in Paris, shows the influence of Toulouse-Lautrec, while Paris Street (1900) and On tile Upper Deck (1901) demonstrate how impressed he was by Parisian life seen in its cabarets, boulevards, public gardens and racecourses. In Self Portrait (1901) and also in his paintings until early 1904, his so-called Blue Period, an element of melancholy dominates his work with subjects of vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, poverty-stricken and deprived people, e.g. the Old Guitarist (1903), who frequented the bars of Montmartre or the streets of Barcelona where he spent the greater part of these years until he settled in Paris in 1904. The restricted ethereal blue colour and simplified, plastic forms combined to create an intense melancholy and pathos away from the atmospheric effects of Impressionism. In Paris he took a studio at the *'Bateau Lavoir', a building inhabited by painters and poets m Montmartre. He soon met artists and writers including *Apolhnaire, Max Jacob, Alfred Jarry, the art critic Andre Salmon and his early patrons, Gertrude and Leo Stein, the art dealer Wilhelm Uhde and the Russian collector *Shchukin. The pessimism of his earlier work gave way to the so-called Rose Period. Actors and strolling players of the boulevards and circuses are rendered in a manner lighter in mood using a palette of gentle tones of pink, ochre and grey, e.g. Boy Leading a Horse, The Boy with a Pipe, The Acrobat's Family and Family of Saltirnhanqucs (all 1905). During this period, P. also produced a number of sculptures, e.g. Head of Fernande (190s) and a remarkable series of etchings, The Frugal Repast (1904), The Saltimbanques (is etchings made in 1904/5 publ. by Vollard in 1913) and Salome (1905). His early work exemplifies his extraordinary power to assimilate varied influences and his uninhibited will to experiment. In 1906 P. met Kahnweiler, *Braque, *Derain and *Matisse. Although conscious of the revolutionary violence of *Fauvism, he remained untouched by the prime importance it gave to colour alone. The experimental nature of his work intensified с 1906/7 inspired, on the one hand, by 'primitive' forms (ancient Iberian sculpture at 1st and later African and Oceanic masks and carvings), e.g. Gertrude Stein, Self Portrait and Two Nudes (all 1906) and, on the other, by *Cezanne's empirical reorganization of forms in paintings which became familiar to P. through the dealer Vollard who had given P. his 1st exhibition in Paris in 1901. In 1906 he discovered the greatness of 'Le Douanier' *Rousseau, the vitality of whose work greatly appealed to P.'s eagerness to find new forms of expression. The epoch-making Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (studies started in 1906 and the painting executed in 1907) was a conscious attempt to complete his researches and, although these were obviously still evolving during its production, this painting seen in retrospect was the vital step in liberating P. from conventional representation. The African art which P. 1st saw с 1906/7 was not inhibited by the representational tradition of Western art, and its forms became for P. a precedent of paramount importance. *Cubism was evolved by P. and *Braque, whom P. had met in 1907 through Apollinaire, by tempering this freedom with Cezanne's sense of structural discipline (a retrospective exhibition of Cezanne was held at the Salon d'Automne in 1907). In the same year the dealer Kahnweiler signed a contract with P. that gave him exclusive sales rights to his work. In early Analytical Cubist paintings (1909—12), e.g. Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (1909—10), the form is still clearly recognizable, although the traditional rules of linear perspective are abandoned — freely dissected, separated into its elements, penetrated and reconstructed in terms of a complex arrangement of overlapping translucent planes, executed in sepia and grey with only occasional use of olive green and ochre, the figure and its shallow spatial background setting are homogeneously integrated. The same quality characterizes Portrait of Uhde (1910), but in Portrait of Kahnweiler (T910) likeness has been abandoned to the uncompromising organization of form into the broken facets of Analytical Cubism. In 1911 P.'s 1st venture in book ill. was a commission by Kahnweiler to do etchings for Max Jacob's Saint Matorel. In Synthetic Cubism (f. 1912-13 to 1916) -e.g. Still Life with Chair Canin (1911—12), The Violin, The Aficionado (both 1912), Bottle of Vieux Man (1913), Guitar, Playing Card, Class, Bottle of Bass (1914) — the use of *found objects, newspaper, etc. in *collages and *papiers colles on the picture surface firstly placed an outspoken emphasis on that surface and secondly declared in a revolutionary manner that painting creates its own reality rather than imitates nature. In 1912 P. began exploring the possibilities of 3-diniensional constructions in relief, e.g. Still Life (1914) and in the same year (1914) in a polychrome, freestanding bronze sculpture, Ix verre d'Absinthe. By 1913 the subdued colour of early Cubism had been abandoned and it now assumed a new role — it glowed from flat, evenly coloured and clearly defined areas, e.g. Woman in an Armchair (191 3) and Card Player (1913—14). From 1914, when his partnership with Braque was ended by the outbreak of war, until 1921, P. continued to work in a Synthetic Cubist idiom culminating in the monumental Three Musicians (1921). By this time, however, Cubism was no longer P.'s exclusive style, although Cubist devices continued to be used even decades later. P. worked on designs for several of Diaghilev's ballets (1917—24), e.g. dropcurtain for Parade (1917) and Pulcinella (1920) and visited Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Florence and Barcelona with the со. His visits to Italy possibly inspired the classicism of his figure compositions of 1919—25. The colossal, sculptural figures, e.g. Two Seated Women (1920), Seated Nude and Three Women at the Fountain (both 1921) make references to classical subjects, but were made in parallel with Cubist paintings. The strong influence of classicism, however, gave way to the ecstatic violence and frenzy of Three Dancers (1925), the 1st to show violent distortions and a new freedom of expression. During the following years, his freely inventive anatomies and architectures began to incorporate Surrealist elements, e.g. Crucifixion and Seated Bather (both 1930). In the late '20s he returned to bas-reliefs and sculpture inventing new forms, e.g. Figure of a Woman (1928) and Woman in Garden (1929—30), and sometimes using painting and sculpture interchangeably, e.g. 'The Painter and His Model (1928), part of which was also made as a painted metal construction. P. exhibited in the 1st Surrealist exhibition (Paris, 1925) and contributed etchings and writings to Surrealist publications — although he did not sign the Surrealist manifestos. In 1931 Vollard publ. 12 etchings by P. as ills to Balzac's Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu and Albert Skira Ovid's Metamorphoses with 30 etchings by P. From the 1930s P. became increasingly involved with political unrest in Europe. His interest m classical mythology combined with his passion for bullfights resulted in his frequent use of the subject of the Minotaur. During 1931-5, P. made a series of 100 etchings, the so-called Vollard Suite (3 portraits of Vollard were made later in 1937). 46 of these (1933—4) were of 'The Sculptor's Studio' and 15 (1933—5?) on the theme of the Minotaur. An additional etching Minotauromachy (1935) was to be used 2 years later as the departing point for P.'s, historically, most important painting since Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the Cuemica. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, P. associated himself with the Spanish Republican cause. In 1937 he made 2 large engravings, Dream and Lie of Franco, and the Cuernica — named after the Basque town destroyed by an air raid. This enormous canvas (11 ft 6in. x 25ft 8in., 3.5 m. x 7.8 m.) has been called 'the most famous painting of our time'. It is a complex allegory that expresses the anguish of human tragedy; it combines violent distortion with restrained subtlety of colour. It was shown at the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World Fair soon after it was completed. The Minotaurs of the Vollard Suite and of Minotauromachy, as well as numerous drawings and studies, e.g. Horse's Head, Woman Weeping and Woman and Dead Child (all 1937) were all fed into the painting of the Cuernica. As World War II was approaching he painted a number of pictures that indicate his foreboding, e.g. Cat Devouring a Bird and Night Fishing at Antibes (both 1939). P.'s wartime output was prodigious in painting and sculpture, including the bronzes Death's Head (1943) and Man with Sheep (modelled 1st in clay, 1944). From 1944 he was a member of the French Communist Party. His final great painting expressing the horror of World War II was The Charnel House (1945). He was, however, to return to the subject again, responding to the Korean War, in Massacre in Korea (1951) and in two enormous paintings War and Peace (both 1952). P.'s constant preoccupation with forms in space find brilliantly imaginative expression m his ground-breaking sculpture (664 catalogued) which includes Cubist bronzes (c. 1909), collage constructions (1912-16), e.g. Glass of Absinthe (1914), the wrought-iron constructions made in collaboration with J. *Gonzalez (1928—32), the use of *readymades, e.g. Bull (1943), Goat (1950) and Monkey with Young (1952). P.'s post-war work included several series of extraordinarily inventive paintings after other artists (Poussin, Delacroix, Velazquez and Manet) as well as a prodigious volume of graphic work and ceramics. He was prolifically productive to the end of his life. The extraordinary versatility, energy and freedom that characterize every phase of his work were yet again manifest in the astonishing new paintings and engravings he made in the last decade of his life until the very day he died, daring and innovative in style and technique, including 347 etchings produced in 1968. A large statue in bronze, Woman Holding a Vase, made from his plaster model of 1933 and shown beside Cuernica in 1937, was placed on his grave. Piccinini Patricia (born in 1965 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) is an Australian artist. She was born in 1965 in Sierra Leone and emigrated to Australia in 1972 with her family. She studied economic history before enrolling at art school in Melbourne. Her mixed media works include the series Truck Babies, and the installation We are Family which was chosen to represent Australia at the 2003 Venice Biennale. Piccinini works with a wide range of media, including sculpture, video, drawing, installation and digital prints. Her major artworks often reflect her interests in world issues such as bioethics, biotechnologies and the environment. Her work has gained extensive international recognition. According to the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia: "Piccinini has an ambivalent attitude towards technology and she uses her artistic practice as a forum for discussion about how technology impacts upon life. She is keenly interested in how contemporary ideas of nature, the natural and the artificial are changing our society. Specific works have addressed concerns about biotechnology, such as gene therapy and ongoing research to map the human genome. Piccinini often creates acutely aesthetic and appealing works as a means of discussing complex ethical issues; she is also fascinated by the mechanisms of consumer culture." Piccinini presents a pair of infant trucksPiccinini likes to explore what she calls the "often specious distinctions between the artificial and the natural". She challenges our classification of life by displaying the relationship and differences between the organic, natural and our constructed material world. This inspires her to combine human physiology and technological development. Picturesque. Term used in late i8th-c. Britain to describe the qualities of ruggedness and irregularity — particularly of rocks, ruins, etc. — felt to enhance the aesthetic appeal of landscapes, e.g. those of Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorraine. 'The p.' was thus an element in the growth of Romanticism; theorists and controversialists about its nature include Edmund Burke, Richard Payne Knight and Sir Uvedale Price. Piero della Francesca (1410/20-92). Italian painter and mathematician. For relatively short periods he worked in Florence, Urbino, Ferrara and Rome but most of his life he lived in Arezzo and Borgo San Sepolcro, his birthplace, where he was a town councillor in 1442. He led an uneventful provincial life and died relatively unknown. A number of influences are fused in his work. Domenico Veneziano was his master and the intellectual ferment of Masaccio, Alberti, Uccello and the mathematicians of his time helped to form his style, which intimately joined science and art. His love and mastery of mathematics is fully expressed in his paintings, constructed within a rigid framework of geometry but controlled by a sensibility and genius for colour, pattern, scale and proportion. P. was overshadowed by his more fashionable contemporaries but he was hailed by the Cubists and is also seen as a central figure of the Renaissance, his influence extending through his pupils Perugino and Signorelli to the main Italian schools. The Madonna of Mercy, a polyptych, is P.'s 1st known commissioned work. The 2 centre pieces only, the Madonna and the Crucifixion, are by P., painted against a gold background as stipulated in the contract; his awareness of abstract, solid and clearly defined forms is in conflict with the decorative treatment required of him. The conflict he was able to resolve with mastery. Masaccio's influence is clearly seen in the Crucifixion, but the drama is heightened by a lower viewpoint and more agitated stark silhouettes. The Baptism of Christ although an early work is already typical of his vision. The action takes place against a hilly landscape and blue sky, patterned by horizontal clouds and establishing a strong horizontal—vertical rhythm with the figures and tree of the foreground. P.'s powers of observation are clearly shown in one of the background figures. The composition is filled with a light and brightness of unearthly quality. His monumental commission for San Francesco in Rimini brought him into contact with the architect and theoretician Alberti in 1451. P.'s monumental style is here at its purest, intimately connected with the architecture it serves. The figures are placed in a clearly defined space which is broken by columns serving to offset or obscure the characters of the action. The sense of order pervades all. In the Flagellation at Urbino, believed to have been painted somewhat later than the Baptism, the figures, set like chessmen on a floor of chequered tiles, are contained by an architectural framework, constructed along the principles of Renaissance architectural theory, which produces a pattern of cubes within the picture space. The frescoes of the Story of the True Cross, painted in the choir of San Francesco, Arezzo between 1452 and 1466, were based on a story popular at that time. The subject is represented with more emphasis on pictorial than literary values; chronological sequence is abandoned in the interest of compositional symmetry. Thus the 2 battle pieces are placed along the lowest sections of 2 opposite walls, and above them the courtly scenes are contrasted. Each scene has been conceived with complete clarity and mastery of form and is related to the unified concept of the wall and entire spatial distribution of the choir. The effect of light and colour is at its most dramatic in The Dream of Constantine. The Resurrection, a further illustration of P.'s great spirituality, poetry and clarity, may have been painted at the end of this period. The double portraits of Battista Sforza and her husband are assumed to date after 1472. Both are placed in strict profile against an ideal landscape suggesting infinity. The unfinished Nativity and the Madonna and Child with Angels are late works. The former shows some Flemish influence in conception and treatment, the latter that growing passion for mathematics which induced him to devote the remainder of his life to the study of mathematics and the publ. of works on harmony and perspective. Piero di Cosimo (c. 1462-r. 1521). Italian painter. Although trained in the Florentine tradition by a long apprenticeship to Cosimo Rosselli, which probably included working with Rosselli in Florence and Rome (Sistine Chapel), and also influenced by painters such as Signorelli and Leonardo da Vinci, nevertheless P. showed a strikingly individual imagination. He lived for many years as a recluse with a reputation as an eccentric, painting scenes from allegories and classical myths difficult to decipher. Typical of his work is the mythological subject, e.g. the Death of Proms, a hauntingly evocative work, serene in comparison with the strange and violent Fight Between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. P.'s imagination found an outlet in designs for festivals, masques and processions, including the celebrated Triumph of Death of 1511. Pieta (It. pity). Painting or sculpture of the Virgin nursing the dead Christ. The idea, developed in Germany in the 14th c, is similar to that of the *imago pietatis but lays greater emphasis on the human and less on the symbolical aspects of Christ's suffering. One of the most famous of all p.s is that from Avignon (c. 1460) now in the Louvre. Pietro da Cortona (1596—1669). Italian painter and architect active in Rome from 1613, a devoted follower of Raphael and of classical antiquity. P. was influenced by Bernini and collaborated with him on a number of buildings. His patrons were the Pope, and the I'ope's family, the Barberini. He thus worked in St Peter's and painted the huge ceiling of the Great Salon of the Barberini Palace, Rome (1633-9). This ceiling was an allegorical fresco painting of Divine Providence exuberant and bold in conception, ingenious in its symbolism. His easel painting Alexander's Defeat of Darius was influential as the first of its kind, showing a battle in violent, theatrical, but ordered confusion. Pignotti Lamberto (Firenze, 1926). Visual Poetry Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto) (c. 1454— 1513). Umbrian painter. An assistant to Perugino in the Sistine Chapel and a fertile and facile painter of Renaissance court life. Many of his compositions are based on his master's work. The lavish use of gold, brilliant colour and pattern is characteristic of his frescoes. He decorated the Borgia apartments of the Vatican (1493-4) for Alexander VI. His most important work is the fresco cycle dealing with the life of Pope Pius II, the former Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Piola Domenico (b Genoa, 1627; d Genoa, 8 April 1703). Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and designer. He was the leading artist in Genoa in the second half of the 17th century, providing ceiling frescoes for many Genoese churches and palaces and producing paintings for private collectors. He was also a prolific draughtsman, whose many designs for thesis pages and book illustrations promoted his work throughout Europe. The enormous and multifarious productivity of his studio, his numerous collaborations with other artists and the fact that most of his most ambitious projects have been destroyed have discouraged any systematic study of his work.