Paolo Uccello | Obsessed With
Perspective
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Niccolò
da Tolentino Leads
the Florentine Troops
(Battle of San Romano)
by Paolo Uccello
1450s, tempera on wood, 182 x 320 cm
National Gallery, London
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The Florentine painter Paolo di Dono is better known as
Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), and his masterworks are his history
paintings of The Battle of San Romano. These
dramatic tempera renderings by Uccello were probably
commissioned for the Palazzo Medici in
Florence. Like other Early Italian Renaissance
artists such as Brunelleschi,
Masaccio, and Ghiberti, Paolo
was fascinated by the problem of perspective.
In Uccello's San Romano works, the warriors with
their jutting lances remind us of medieval chivalric
compositions in which the figures are stiff-limbed and wooden
looking. Paolo Uccello attempted to make his figures protrude
from the flat picture plane, largely by use of strong
contrast in light and dark elements rather than
three-dimensional modelling. Paolo Uccello's carousel horses
and cartoonish figures are highly ornamental, Gothic in
style in their use of decorative detailed surface texture.
Paolo Uccello had a keen interest in applied geometry
and perspective.
A very talented artist, Paolo Uccello was reportedly
obsessed with applied geometry and the new perspective,
spending many hours rendering various object in foreshortening.
Uccello's depiction of a fallen figure on the ground is
impressive and the first of its kind, probably causing quite a
sensation among artists at the time. Paolo's use of
perspective is further demonstrated by his depiction of broken
lances on the ground all pointing toward a common vanishing
point on the stage-like battlefield.
Brenda Harness, Art Historian
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