Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono around 1397 in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, was a Florentine painter of the Early Renaissance whose lifelong obsession with the mathematical principles of perspective made him one of the most intellectually distinctive artists of the fifteenth century. He trained in the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti, working on the famous bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery, before establishing himself as an independent painter. His nickname — 'Uccello' means 'bird' in Italian — supposedly derived from his fondness for painting animals, particularly birds.\n\nUccello's most celebrated works are the three panels depicting the 'Battle of San Romano' (c. 1438–1440), now divided among the Uffizi in Florence, the National Gallery in London, and the Louvre in Paris. These extraordinary paintings are among the earliest attempts in Western art to render a scene of violent action within a coherent perspectival framework, with shattered lances, fallen knights, and rearing horses arranged in patterns that are simultaneously naturalistic and almost eerily schematic. Giorgio Vasari's account of Uccello spending nights working on foreshortening problems — ignoring his wife's pleas to come to bed — has enshrined him as the archetype of the Renaissance artist consumed by theoretical obsession. His late work, including 'The Hunt in the Forest' (c. 1470), displays an almost dreamlike quality that has appealed strongly to modern sensibilities. He died in Florence in 1475.