Uccello
NAME: Uccello, Paolo.
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Major Renaissance painter working in the new perspective style
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE & PLACE OF BIRTH: 1397, Pratovecchio, near Florence, Italy.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: December 10, 1475, Florence, Italy. Aged 78.
DISCIPLINE: Painting.
FIELD: Art
LANGUAGE: Italian.
PARENTS: Father: Dono di Paolo, from Pratovecchio in Castentino. Mother: Antonia di Giovanni Castello del Beccuto (married in 1387), of a well-to-do Florentine family from the parish of Santa Maria Maggiore.
SIBLINGS: Unknown.
SPOUSE: Tommasa di Benedetto Malifici, aged about 19, in 1452.
CHILDREN: 2 children, Donatello, born in 1453. Antonia, born in 1456.
(Antonia became a Carmelite nun and, as is believed by some sources, a
painter).
EDUCATION: None
MAJOR WORK: “The Battle of San Romano” (c. 1456)
LIFE & TIMES:
There is evidence that, by the age of 10, Uccello, like many others artists of his day, was trained in the workshop of the sculptor <taught by> Ghiberti* as he is included in the list of members of Ghiberti's studio of June 1407.
Following the death of the last local mosaics specialist, the Venetian Senate decided to approach a Florentine master to complete the mosaics of San Marco. At this time the two cities, linked by the common opposition to the Visconti of Milan, were on good terms, and Uccello was unexpectedly chosen. Uccello may have had some experience in this art, with the restoration of the Baptistery mosaics. The choice, however, may have been due to the good offices of his teacher, Ghiberti, who happened to be in Venice during the winter of 1424.
Uccello returned to Florence in 1431 and completed frescos of scenes from the Creation. The frescos, still in Santa Maria Novella, were in the Gothic tradition, still popular, and show Ghiberti's influence.
In 1432, the cathedral authorities in Florence commissioned Uccello to produce some form of mosaic decoration. There is, however, no evidence that he was actually employed in the Cathedral before 1436, when he was engaged to create a monumental to Sir John Hawkwood.
Hawkwood was a London tailor's apprentice who raised himself to knighthood under Edward III, ending his career in Florence as a successful leader of mercenary troops. A year before his death in 1394, provision had been made for a marble monument to be erected above his grave in the Cathedral, but this expensive project did not go ahead.
Ucello’s 'Hawkwood', with its sharp recession and low vanishing point, follows rules laid down by the architect <followed techniques of> Brunelleschi.* (This perspective procedure, described in the 'Della Pittura' treatise of <followed techniques of > Alberti*, takes into account the elements of space, where the base of the picture space was divided into equal sections, joined with the vanishing point.
The sequential lines provided the orthogonals of the composition. The exact height of the vanishing point was predetermined by the height of a human figure in the front of the painting. The receding planes of the design were achieved by means of a line (on the same horizontal as the vanishing point) drawn from a vertical at a corner of the base to a point outside the picture space. This point in turn was connected with the bases of the orthogonals).
In 1443, seven years after the Hawkwood monument, Uccello was again at work in the Cathedral, engaged in a commission of the painting of the colossal clock-face at the interior of the west facade of the church.
This, too, involved the use of linear perspective to create a three-dimensional illusion, and is founded on the formula of a circle inscribed within a square, which is also found on the base of the 'Hawkwood'. Both square and circle are depicted in recession framing the dial of the clock, the interior of which is coloured blue and has at its centre a gold star. In the spandrels are circular apertures, containing the most striking feature of the work, four large heads of male prophets.
In the summer of 1443 Uccello also produced three cartoons for the circular windows in the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, executed in stained glass, two of which still survive.
After a brief trip to Padua in 1447 with <a pal of> Donatello*, Uccello was commissioned for a work in the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella. The result was a fresco showing two scenes from the Flood and the Recession. The Flood portrays human forms like those by <influenced by> Masaccio* in his frescoes at the Brancacci Chapel, and Uccello combined this Renaissance influence with Gothic tradition. This fresco was followed by one of 'The Nativity', formerly in the cloister of San Martino alla Scala.
In 1452, Uccello married a much younger woman, Tommasa di Benedetto Malifici, aged about 19, with whom he had 2 children, Donatello, born in 1453 and Antonia, born in 1456.
In the late 1450's there was a move towards a decorative, non-illusionistic system of perspective, most pronounced in Uccello's major works, the three panels representing battle of San Romano, now in the Louvre, Paris; the National Gallery, London; and the Uffizi, Florence.
Uccello apparently led an increasingly reclusive existence during his last years. In 1465 he was in Urbino with his son Donato, and around this time completed a single work 'The Profanation of the Host', commissioned by the Confraternity of Corpus Domini. The recorded payments made to Uccello at Urbino came from the Confraternity, although, during this period, many painting and sculptures in Urbino were commissioned on behalf of projects ordered by the great benefactor, Duke <patron was> Federigo da Montefeltro*
At the end of October or the beginning of November 1468, Uccello returned to Florence. In August 1469 he wrote at the bottom of his tax return, "I am old
and without means of livelihood, my wife is ill and I can no longer work". Six years later, on 11 November 1475, Uccello made his will, and on 12th December 1475 he was buried in his father's grave at Santo Spirito.
ASSESSMENT: Significant primarily for his role in establishing new means of rendering perspective that became a major component of the Renaissance style.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Uccello was probably assisted in his perspective work by mathematician <probably assisted by> Toscanelli*.
He powerfully influenced the work of artists <influenced> Durer* and <influenced> Da Vinci*
ONELINER: Paolo Uccello, major early Renaissance painter
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Pope-Hennessey, John, Paolo Uccello, London & New York: Phaidon, 1969.