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 :. | the legend of the true cross, detail | st sigismund detail from st sigismund and sigismondo | the legend of the true cross, detail | Senigallia Madonna | the legend of the true cross, detail |
Related Artists:
Henryk Siemiradzki
(1843-1902) was a Polish Academic painter. He was particularly known for his depictions of scenes from the ancient Graeco-Roman world and the New Testament. Siemiradzki was born to a Polish szlachta family of a military physician in the village of Novobelgorod (now Pechenegi) near Kharkov, Ukraine. He studied at Kharkov Gymnasium where he learned painting under a scion of Karl Briullov, D. I. Besperchy. He entered the Physics-Mathematics School of Kharkov University but continued his painting lessons from Bespechy. After graduating from the University with the degree of Kandidat he abandoned his scientific career and moved to Saint Petersburg to study painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts in the years 1864-1870. Upon his graduation he was awarded a gold medal. In 1870-1871 he studied under Karl von Piloty in Munich on a grant from the Academy.
jose Madrazo Y Agudo
Spanish Neoclassical Painter, 1781-1859 was a Spanish painter of the Neoclassic period. Born in Santander. Studied in Madrid with Cosme de Acuna and Gregorio Ferro, both rectors of the Academia de San Fernando at the beginning of the 19th century. Don Fernando La Serna, who was named ambassador to France at the time, brought Madrazo to Paris, where he entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David. There, under royal patronage from King Carlos IV, he executed a painting of the Death of Lucretia and other canvases on events from classic Greco-Roman history. He moved to Rome during Napoleonic times, where he was briefly jailed for failing to complete oaths of loyalty to the newly installed Napoleon II of France as King of Rome. In Rome, he was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca. King Carlos IV named him pintor de camara (painter of the chamber), a position confirmed by King Ferdinand VII.
Kate Greenaway,RWS,RI
1846-1901 English painter, illustrator and writer. The daughter of a Fleet Street wood-engraver, John Greenaway (1818-90), she trained at Islington School of Art, Heatherleys Academy and the Slade School of Fine Art, all in London. In 1868 she did her first commercial work, producing Christmas and Valentine cards for Marcus Ward, Belfast.