Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1422-1492 Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational, calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci, Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master; and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene, memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant.   Related Paintings of Piero della Francesca :. | senigallia madonna | Polyptych of Perugia | The Crucifixion | the legend of the true cross, | the legend of the true cross, detail |
Related Artists:
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Giuseppe de nittis
Italian, 1846-1884 Italian painter, pastellist and printmaker. Throughout his career he was committed to a plein-air aesthetic and was particularly interested in rendering varying light effects, a concern that brought him into contact with the Impressionists. He was also acquainted with the members of the Macchiaioli, for whom his work was influential. In addition to oils, he experimented with printmaking and made innovative use of pastels. Practising a restrained, and therefore 'acceptable', form of Impressionism,
Giovanni Antonio Fumiani
(1645-1710) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. Born in Venice in 1645, he trained in Bologna under Domenico degli Ambrogi, a specialist in quadratura, but by 1668 he was back in Venice, where he painted a Virgin and Saints in San Benedetto. He was influenced by Ludovico Carracci and Alessandro Tiarini, and soon also became interested in the work of Paolo Veronese, so that he started to use elaborate architectural settings and brighter colours. He painted a Virgin Appearing to Pius V (1674; Vicenza, S Lorenzo), whose monumentality foreshadows Tiepolo, whereas mosaics in San Marco, created in 1677 from Fumianies cartoons, are closer to the idiosyncratic art of Pietro della Vecchia. He contributed to the decoration of San Rocco (1675, 1676, 1678), where he painted a large canvas of the Charity of St Roch on the ceiling of the nave, In his smaller paintings, however, such as the modelli (Florence, Uffizi) painted for the Ferdinand de Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, for whom he worked for a long time, with Niccole Cassana acting as intermediary, Fumiani revealed a lively decorative sense and a taste for animated, sensual subjects that produced works of great quality. His last work is the large lunette depicting Frederick III visiting St Zacharyes Convent in the Company of the Doge (Venice, San Zaccaria). The decoration of San Pantalon with scenes from the Life of St Pantaleon (1680-1704) utilized canvases to cover a large ceiling (25x50 m), an ambitious undertaking, both in its scale and in the unity of the magniloquent images, that parallels Andrea Pozzoes decoration at the church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome. Fumiani was responsible for painting what is claimed to the largest painting on canvas in the world and covers the whole of the ceiling of the church Chiesa di San Pantaleone Martire, known as San Pantalon, in Venice. The painting depicts The Martyrdom and Apotheosis of St Pantalon, which he painted from 1680 until 1704. He putatively died from a fall from a scaffold, although some sources date his death to six years after he stopped work on the canvas