The Early Renaissance


   

Paolo Uccello

(b Florence, c. 1397; d Florence, 10 Dec 1475).

Italian painter, draughtsman, mosaicist and designer of stained glass. His work vividly illustrates the principal issues of Florentine art during the first half of the 15th century. Trained within the tradition of the Late Gothic style, he eventually became a leading exponent of the application of linear perspective based on the mathematical system established by Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti. It is the merging of these two diametrically opposed tendencies that forms the basis of Uccello’s style. As well as painting on panel and in fresco (many of his works in this medium have been severely damaged), he was also a master mosaicist and produced designs for stained glass.

 

Portrait of a Lady
1450s
Oil on canvas, 39 x 26 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Portrait of a Young Man
1450s
Oil on canvas, 47 x 36 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Chambery