Paolo Uccello

Portrait of a Lady (h. 1450), Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.

Present portrait of Giotto.

Paolo di Dono, better known as Paolo Uccello (June 15, 1397, Pratovecchio?/Florence?, - December 10, 1475, Florence), was a 14th century painter and mathematician Italian who was noted for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art.

Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists wrote that Uccello "took pleasure in investigating the complicated mechanisms and strange works of perspective art", stressing its most distinctive feature, that is, the almost obsessive interest in construction in perspective. This characteristic, together with adherence to the International Gothic climate, makes Paolo Uccello a figure of limits between two figurative worlds, following an artistic course among the most autonomous of the Quattrocento. He used perspective to create a sense of depth in his paintings and not, like his contemporaries, to narrate different stories or stories that follow one another over time. His best known works are the three paintings depicting the Battle of San Romano (for a long time these three paintings were mistakenly called the & # 34; Battle of Sant'Egidio of 1416 & # 34;).

Paolo worked in the late Gothic tradition and emphasized color and pageantry rather than the classical realism that other artists were promoting. His style is best described as idiosyncratic, and he left no school following behind. He had some influence on 20th century art (including New Zealand painter Melvin Day) and literary criticism ("Vies imaginaires" by Marcel Schwob, "Uccello le poil" by Antonin Artaud and & #34;O Mundo Como Ideia" by Bruno Tolentino).

Life

Sources for the life of Paolo Uccello are scant: Giorgio Vasari's biography, written 75 years after Paolo's death, and a few contemporary official documents. Uccello was probably born in Florence, although Pratovecchio, where his father Dono di Paolo was from, has also been noted, in the year 1397. His tax returns for a few years indicate that he was born in the year 1397, but in 1446 he maintained that he was born in 1396. His nickname Uccello comes from his fondness for painting birds. He was the son of Dono Di Paolo, a barber and surgeon from Pratovecchio, near Arezzo, who had acquired Florentine citizenship since 1373; his mother's name was Antonia di Giovanni del Beccuto.

Training in Ghiberti's workshop

At the age of ten (1407), he entered as an apprentice in the school of the famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, whose workshop was a leading center of Florentine art at the time. Ghiberti's late Gothic narrative style and sculptural composition greatly influenced Paolo. It was a style linked to linear taste, to the mundane appearance of sacred characters, with the refinement of forms and paying attention to the most minute details, with a naturalism rich in decorations.

It was also around this time that Paolo began a lifelong friendship with Donatello. He stayed in Ghiberti's workshop until 1412 and he was able to meet the most renowned artists, including Masolino and Michelozzo. He participated, at that time, in the completion of the door of the Florence Baptistery, made by the latter (1403-1424), now placed on the north side. In this period the use of the nickname "Uccello" due to his skill in his depiction of animals, particularly birds.

After having completed his training in painting, sculpture, goldsmithing and architecture, he joined, in 1414, the painters' brotherhood Compagnia di San Luca (the "Company of Painters of San Lucas") and, a year later, on October 15, 1415, he joined the Guild of Medici e Spezili. The works of these years are very dark, or even lost, or impregnated with a traditional Gothic taste, with still recent and disputed attributions. Like his contemporaries Masaccio and Beato Angelico, the first independent works must have dated from the 1920s.

According to Vasari, Uccello's first painting was a fresco of Saint Anthony and Saints Cosmas and Damian among women, commissioned for the Lelmo hospital in Florence. He later painted two figures for Annalena, nunnery, lost work. Shortly thereafter he painted three frescoes with scenes from the life of Saint Francis above the left door of the church of Santa Trinidad. For Paolo Carnesecchi's chapel in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore he painted a fresco of the Annunciation and four prophets (now lost). In this fresco, he painted a large building with columns in perspective. Vasari writes that this scene was considered "something very beautiful and difficult".

The fresco of the Virgin and Child (Florence, San Marco Museum) that was in one of the Del Beccuto houses, the mother's family, also dates from these years.

Paolo painted the Lives of the Holy Fathers in the cloister of San Miniato, on a hill above Florence. Vasari points out that for this work he painted partly with verde terra, which is the color of a green earth, widely used in the Quattrocento, and partly in color, but using unusual colors—blue fields, red cities, and buildings in different colors. He considered it a protest against his monotonous meals served by the abbot, cheese in soup, and cheese for dessert. In the end, Paolo was so dejected that he gave up. he escaped, finishing the play only after the abbot promised him normal meals without cheese.

Uccello was asked to paint on canvas a series of scenes of horses and other animals for the house of the Medicis. Vasari admired the way he represented animals, "he showed the pride of the lion in a scene with two of them ready to bite each other, and he represented speed and fear in the figures of deer and ibex". Ucello loved to paint animals. and he kept in his house a large number of paintings of all kinds of animals, especially birds.

Frescos The Flood, The creation of Eve and Original sin in Santa Maria Novella (Florence).

By 1424 Paolo was earning his living as a painter. In that year he painted episodes of the Creation and Expulsion for the Green Cloister ( Chiostro Verde ) of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (today severely damaged), thereby proving the maturity artistic of him Again, he was able to paint a whole series of animals in a very animated way. As he also managed to paint trees in his natural colors, in contrast to many of his predecessors, he began to acquire a reputation as a landscape painter. He followed with scenes of the Flood, the story of Noah's Ark, Noah's sacrifice, and Noah's drunkenness. These scenes brought him great fame in Florence.

Around this time Manetti taught him geometry.

The trip to Venice

Between 1425 and 1430, Uccello was in Venice. He worked on the reconstruction of the mosaics on the façade of San Marcos, which had been destroyed after suffering a fire. He made a Saint Peter now lost, and perhaps also some marble compositions for the basilica flooring. Longhi and Pudelko have even attributed to him the design of the mosaics of the Visitation, Nativity and Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple of the Chapel of the Mascoli in the Basilica of San Marco, executed by Michele Giambono: the three scenes, attributed by most critics to the design of Andrea del Castagno, active in the city for several years, present a rather complex perspective design.

The Venetian experience heightened his propensity for depicting fantastical escapes, probably inspired by the lost frescoes by Pisanello and Gentile da Fabriano in the Doge's Palace in Venice, but it removed him from Florence during a crucial period for artistic development: in the The year 1423 the Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano had in fact signaled the triumph of the "international" in the city, and these are also the years of Masaccio's great creations, such as the Brancacci Chapel (1424-1428), which already set a new point of reference on the artistic scene.

In 1427 he was probably in Venice. Some suggest that he visited Rome in the summer of 1430 with two former Ghiberti students like himself, his friend Donatello, and Masolino. With the latter, he may have collaborated on the lost cycle of Illustrious Men in the Orsini Palace, today known only for a miniature copy of Leonardo da Besozzo. The hypothesis is based only on conjecture, coupled with the attraction of the artists of the time of the renewal of Rome promised by Martin V. He would return to Florence in 1431. He also painted some frescoes in the cathedral of Prato and Bologna.

The return to Florence

In 1431 he returned to Florence, where he executed the Histories of Genesis from the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, the oldest works that can be safely attributed to him. In particular, he painted the lunettes with the Creation of the animals and the creation of Adam and the picture of the Creation of Eve and the original Sin , which can be dated to that year.. In these works, the influence of Masolino can be seen in some details (the serpent's head in Original Sin), while the severe figure of the Eternal Father is reminiscent of Ghiberti.

The work demonstrates, however, a first contact with novelty, particularly Masaccio's, above all in the inspiration for Adam's naked body, heavy and monumental, although not anatomically proportioned. In general, it already manifests that geometric tendency of the artist, with the figures inscribed in fences and other geometric shapes, along with late Gothic reminiscences such as the decorative insistence on naturalistic details.

The artist then worked on a second lunette with a lower inset (the Universal Flood and the History of Noah) in 1447-1448.

The small triptych with the Crucifixion, kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is dated around 1430, probably made for a cell in the convent of Santa Maria del Paradiso in Florence. Between the year 1430 and 1440 he made for the altar of the church of San Bartolomé (formerly called San Miguel Arcángel) in Quarate, of which only the predella remains made up of three scenes with the Vision of San Juan in Patmos, the Adoration of the Magi and Saints James the Greater and Ansano, kept in the Diocesan Museum of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence.

Prato

Yes, as is widely thought, he is the author of the frescoes History of the Virgin and History of Saint Stephen in the Cappella dell'Assunta, Florence, so he would have visited nearby Prato sometime between the winter of 1435 and the spring of 1436.

Beato Jacopone da Todi

In this period he began the frescoes in the Cappella dell'Assunta del Duomo in Prato. Paolo Uccello is credited with part of the Stories of the Virgin (Birth of Mary and Presentation of Mary in the Temple) and Stories of Saint Stephen (Dispute of Saint Stephen and Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, except for the bottom half), plus four saints in the niches of the flanks of the arch (Saint Jerome, Saint Dominic, Saint Paul and Saint Francis) and the moving Beato Jacopone da Todi on the right wall of the altar, today uprooted and preserved in the Civic Museum.

Particularly significant is the vertiginous staircase in the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, where one sees the rapid maturation of the ability to represent complex elements in space, even though virtuosity is not present now a few years before.

Stylistically close to the frescoes are the Holy Nun with Two Children from the Contini Bonacossi Collection, the Madonna with Child from the National Gallery of Ireland and the Crucifixion from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

Big commissions

Funeral monument to Sir John Hawkwood

Back in Florence, he worked mainly on the works of Santa Maria del Fiore. He received the first monumental commission from him in 1436: to paint the equestrian portrait of the English captain John Hawkwood, whom the Florentines called Giovanni Acuto. He was executed in just three months and signed his name at the base of the statue ( PAULI UCELLI OPUS ). The work is monochrome (executed with verde terra), used to give the impression of a bronze statue. In this monochrome fresco he showed his deep interest in perspective. The condottiere and his horse are presented as if the fresco were a sculpture, seen from below. He employed two different perspectives, one for the base and one frontal for the horse and the knight. The figures are careful, courtly, well treated volumetrically through a skilful drawing of light and shadow with chiaroscuro.

In 1437 he made a trip to Bologna, where the fresco of the Nativity remains in the first chapel on the left of the church of San Martín.

Uccello's three best-known paintings, commemorating the Battle of San Romano, have no fixed dating among critics. Some place them in the period between 1438 and 1440, and others around 1450-1456. The historical episode they commemorate is a battle from the year 1432 in which the Florentines, led by Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino, defeated the Sienese. In three panels, exhibited until 1784 in a room of the Medici Palace on via Larga, in Florence, today they are separated in three of the most important museums in Europe: the National Gallery of London (Niccolò da Tolentino alla testa dei fiorentini), the Uffizi (Disarciamento di Bernardino della Ciarda) and the Louvre in Paris (Intervento decisive a fianco dei fiorentini di Michele Attendolo), the latter perhaps made at a later time and signed by the artist. The work was carefully prepared and several drawings remain with which the artist studied geometric constructions in particularly complicated perspective: they remain today in the Uffizi and the Louvre and it is believed that in this study he was probably helped by the mathematician Paolo Toscanelli. The forms that extend into many planes accentuate Uccello's virtuosity as a draughtsman, and provide a controlled visual structure to the chaos of the battle scene.

The first document confirming the existence of its own workshop dates from 1442. Between 1443 and 1445 he painted the figures of the clock of the Duomo, of the contrafacade and the cartoons for two of the stained glass windows of the dome (Resurrection, executed by the glassmaker Bernardo di Francesco, and Nativity, made by Angelo Lippi). In these same years, for the cloister of the Spedale di San Martino della Scala, he frescoed a lunette with the Nativity , today badly damaged, and the Uffizi deposits together with the relative sinopia.

Around 1447-1448 Paolo Uccello was again busy with the frescoes in the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, particularly the lunette with the Universal Flood, in which Noah is seen coming out of the ark, and under the panel with the Sacrifice and drunkenness of Noah. In the lunette he adopted a double crossed vanishing point that accentuated, along with the reality of the colors, the drama of the episode: on the left is the ark at the beginning of the deluge, on the right after the deluge; Noah is present either in the act of taking the top of the olive tree, or on the mainland. The figures get smaller as they move away, and the ark seems to reach infinity. In the nudes the influence of Masaccio's figures can be seen, while the richness of details was still reminiscent of the late Gothic style.

Padua and return

He worked in Padua in 1444 and again in 1445, called by Donatello. And here he performed in the Vitaliani Palace frescoes with Giants today lost.

Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino in the battle of San Romano (c. 1438–1440), 182 × 320 cm, National Gallery of London.

Back in Florence in 1446, he painted the Green Stations of the Cross, again in the cloister of the church of Santa Maria Novella. Around the year 1447–1454 he painted Scenes from Monastic Life for the church of San Miniato al Monte, Florence. Dating between the year 1450 and 1475 is the table with the Thebaid, a theme widely spread in those years, and kept in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.

Uccello married Tomassa Malifici in 1452 with whom they had two children. In 1453 Donato (named after Donatello) was born, and in 1456 his wife gave birth to Antonia. The table with an Annunciation today lost, of which the predella with Christ in mercy between the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, is preserved in the Museum of San Marcos is from the year 1452. in Florence. Around the year 1455 he produced the panel with Saint George and the Dragon for the National Gallery in London.

Between 1460 and 1465 he made a Crucifixion and Saints today at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. In 1461 he painted frescoes with scenes of monastic life in the cloister of San Miniato, only partially preserved.

In 1465 he executed for Lorenzo di Matteo Morelli, a panel with Saint George and the Dragon (Paris, Jacquemart André Museum) and the fresco with the Incredulity of Saint Thomas on the façade of the church of Santo Tomás in the Mercato Vecchio (lost), and which, according to Vasari, deserved a negative judgment from his friend Donatello. According to Vasari, afterwards "Paulo was saddened and, feeling that this last effort received more disapproval than praise, he locked himself in his house, and no longer had the courage to leave it anymore."

Urbino and last years

At a very advanced age, Paolo Uccello was invited by Federico de Montefeltro to Urbino, where he stayed between 1465 and 1468, getting involved in the decoration of the Ducal Palace. There he was with his son Donato. He worked for the Corpus Domini Fraternity, a lay brotherhood. He painted part of the predella of the Corpus Domini with the Miracle of the Profaned History. (The main panel was finished by Justo de Gante with a scene of the "Communion of the Apostles' in 1474.) Ucello's predella comprises six scenes, with meticulously naturalistic interiors, related to the anti-Semitic myth of the desecration of the host, which is based on an event supposed to have occurred in Paris in the year 1290 It was an effort by Duke Federico de Montefeltro of Urbino to vilify Jews, while tolerating some Jewish activity.Not all of these scenes are unanimously attributed to Paolo Uccello.

A scene in the predela Corpus Domini (h. 1465-1468), established in the home of a Jewish lender. The blood at the bottom emanates from the Host, which the lender has tried to cook, and slides below the door. This story first entered the Italian literary tradition through Giovanni Villani (h. 1280–1348) and his Nuova Cronica.

In his Florentine tax return of August 1469 he declared: "I am old and infirm, my wife is ill, and I can work no more." According to Giorgio Vasari's writings, Paolo Ucello “gave himself up to perspective, which kept him poor and secluded until his death. He thus became very old, and feeling little joy in his old age, he died... »

Detail The huntby Paolo Uccello (Museum Ashmolean)

His last known work is La caza, h. 1470, which is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He made his will on November 11, 1475 and died shortly thereafter at the age of 78 on December 10, 1475 in the hospital of Florence. He was buried in the tomb of his father in the Florentine Basilica of Santo Spirito, on December 12. He left many drawings among which there are three in the Uffizi gallery of drawings and prints with perspective studies. In this study the artist was probably helped by the mathematician Paolo Toscanelli.

With his precise and analytical mind he tried to apply a scientific method to represent objects in three-dimensional space. In particular, some of his studies of perspective by shortening the torus survive, and a standard representation of skill as a draftsman were his depictions of the mazzocchio. The mazzocchio was a a kind of bun that was worn on the head, in the shape of a ring that gave rise to perspective games with its polyhedral drawings. The perspective in his paintings is influenced by famous painters such as Piero della Francesca, Albrecht Dürer, and Leonardo da Vinci, to name a few.

Her daughter, Antonia Uccello (1446–1491) was a Carmelite nun, whom Giorgio Vasari called "a daughter who knew how to draw". She was even highlighted as a "pittoressa," a painter, on her death certificate. Her style and her skill remain a mystery as nothing of her work survives.

Style

A dripping trend of Uccello art in any other work is more evident than in Saint George and the Dragon (h. 1456).

The most apparent characteristic of the mature works of Paolo Uccello is the daring construction in perspective. In fact, Vasari cites as Uccello's word the expression "Oh, what a sweet business perspective!" However, unlike Masaccio, that perspective does not serve him to provide a logical order to the composition, within a finite and measurable space, but rather to create stage scenes. fantastic and visionary, in indefinite spaces. His cultural horizon was always linked to late Gothic culture, although interpreted with originality.

The works of maturity are contained in an environment of logical and geometric perspective, where the figures are considered volumes, placed in functions of mathematical and rational correspondences, where the natural horizon and that of feelings are excluded. The effect, quite perceptible in works such as the Battle of San Romano, is that of a series of mannequins that represent a scene with frozen and suspended actions, but precisely from this inscrutable fixity is born the emblematic and dreamlike character of His painting.

The fantastic effect is even accentuated by the use of dark skies and backgrounds, on which the figures stand out luminous, locked in unnatural positions.

Critical appraisal

Perspective study.

Vasari, in his Lives, praised the perfection to which Paolo Uccello had brought the art of perspective, but reproached him for having devoted himself to it "without measure", abandoning the study of the representation of human and animal figures, noting that this “great Florentine painter, who, endowed with a sophisticated wit, took pleasure in investigating the complicated mechanisms and strange works of the art of perspective; and he devoted so much time to this task, that if he had dedicated the same effort to the figures (despite the fact that he executed them well) he would have become even more unique and admirable ».

This limited critical vision was in fact assumed by all subsequent scholars until Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, who, emphasizing how the scientific study of perspective does not impoverish artistic expression, opened the way to a more complete understanding of Paolo Uccello's art and reasoned.

Among subsequent studies, a problem often faced is that of interpreting the fragmentary perspective of some works, according to some, such as Parrochi, linked to a "non-acceptance of the reductive system of construction with points of distance applied exemplarily by the architect Brunelleschi in his experimental tablets". But perhaps it would be more correct to speak of a personal interpretation of such principles, rather than a true and authentic opposition, with the claim of achieving a greater "abstract sense and fantastic" (Mario Salmi). For Paolo, perspective always remained as an instrument to place things in space and not to represent real things, as is especially evident in works such as the Universal Flood. Standing halfway between the late Gothic world and the Renaissance novelty, Paolo Uccello fuses "ancient idealism and new means of investigation" (Parronchi).

Works

Pope-Hennessy is much more conservative than Italian authors: he attributes some of the inferior works to a "Master of Prato" and a "Master of Karlsruhe". Most of the dates in the list (taken from Borsi and Borsi) are derived from stylistic comparison rather than documentation.

Flood and water retreatSanta Maria Novella, Florence.

Watch in the Duomo, Florence.

Above: Painting of a mazzocchio in The Battle of Saint Roman, h. 1435-1440.
Below: Perspective study of a bull, h. 1430-1440.

• Announcement (h. 1420–1425) - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
• Creation and Fall (h. 1424–1425) - Luneto and lower section, Chiostro Verde, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
• Portrait of lady (h. 1430) - New York Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Wizard worship (h. 1431–1432) - Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe
• Saint George and the Dragon (h. 1431) - National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
• Quarate Predela (h. 1433) - Diocesan Museum of Santo Stefano al Ponte, Florence
• Frescos en la Capella dell' Assunta (h. 1434–1435) - Duomo, Prato
• Santa nuja with two children (h. 1434–1435) - Contini-Bonacosi Collection, Florence
• Funeral monument to Sir John Hawkwood (h. 1436) - Duomo, Florence. Painted in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. For conservation reasons, the mural was torn from the wall and mounted on canvas, although it remains in the same temple.
• Saint George and the dragon (h. 1439–1440) -Jacquemart-André Museum, Paris
• Portrait of young (h. 1440) -Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry
• Watch dial with four prophets/evangelists (1443) - Duomo, Florence
• Resurrection (1443–1444) - Glass, Duomo, Florence
• Nativity (1443–1444) - Glass, Duomo, Florence
• Virgin with Child (h. 1445)-National Gallery of Ireland
• The Flood (1446-1448) - Mural del Claustro Verde de Santa María Novella, Florence, Italy). You got damaged by another mural The creation of Eve and Original sin.
• Scenes of monastic life (h. 1447–1454) - S. Miniato al Monte, Florence
• Saint George and the Dragon (h. 1450-55) - National Gallery, London
• The Battle of Saint Roman. Series of three paintings executed between 1456 and 1460. It is one of the best known works of Paolo Uccello. Incargo de los Médicis, these paintings present a scene from the history of Florence of 1432. It is formed by:

• Nicholas of Tolentino leading the Florentines (Niccolò da Tolentino alla testa dei fiorentini) (h. 1450–1456) - National Gallery in London
• Nicolás Mauricio de Tolentino defeats Bernardino Della Ciarda in the Battle of Saint Roman or The triumph over Bernardino Della Ciarda (Disarcionamento di Bernardino della Ciarda) (h. 1450–1456) - Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
• Crucial intervention next to the Florentines of the condottiero Micheletto da Cotignola or Contraataque de Michelotto da Cotignola in the Battle of San Romano (Decisional Intervento a fianco dei fiorentini del condottiero Micheletto Attendolo da Cotignola) (h. 1450) - Musée du Louvre, Paris

• Crucifixion with saints (h. 1457-1458) - Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza de Madrid
• Life of the Holy Fathers or Tebaida (h. 1460–1465) - Accademia, Florence
• Miracle of the Promised Host (1467–1468) - predela, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Palacio Ducal, Urbino)
• The hunt in the woods (h. 1470) -- Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

In the past, he was also attributed the panel with Five Masters of the Florentine Renaissance (Louvre Museum, Paris) by an unknown Florentine painter, dating from the end of the century XV and the first years of the XVI.