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 :. | st agatha from the predella of the st anthony polyptych | the legend of the true cross, detail | Discovery and Proof of the True Cross | cupid returning an arrow to the quiver | london, national gallery tempera on panel |
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Fernand Leger
French Cubist Painter, 1881-1955,was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker,Leger was born in the Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Leger initially trained as an architect from 1897-1899 before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles in 1902-1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts; he also applied to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gerome and others, while also studying at the Academie Julian. He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of Impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mere (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Leger's work after he saw the Cezanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1909 he moved to Montparnasse and met such leaders of the avant-garde as Archipenko, Lipchitz, Chagall, and Robert Delaunay. His major painting of this period is Nudes in the Forest (1909-10), in which Leger displayed a personal form of Cubism??his critics called it "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical formsethat made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso. In 1910 he joined with several other artists, including Delaunay, Jacques Villon, Henri Le Fauconnier, Albert Gleizes, Francis Picabia, and Marie Laurencin to form an offshoot of the Cubist movement, the Puteaux Group??also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section). Leger was influenced during this time by Italian Futurism, and his paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their vocabulary of tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colours plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Leger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August 1914 for service in the French Army, he spent two years at the front in Argonne. He produced many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in the trenches, and painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916 he almost died after a mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun.
Jan Wyck
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1652-1700,Son of Thomas Wijck. A marriage certificate issued on 22 November 1676 describes the artist as 'Jan Wick of St Paul's Covent Garden, gent., widower, about 31 ...', suggesting that he was born c. 1645, but his correct birthdate is known from the inscription on a mezzotint portrait of him by John Faber II (1684-1756) after a painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Jan is first documented on 17 June 1674, when he appeared before the court of the Painter-Stainers' Company in London and vowed to pay both his own and his father's quarterly fees. The certificate of 1676 relates to his second marriage, to Ann Skinner (d 1687), who between 1678 and 1683 bore him four children, all of whom died young. After Ann's death in 1687, he married Elizabeth Holomberg (d 1693) in 1688 and moved to Mortlake. Between 1689 and 1693 they had two sons and a daughter.
Grigoriy Soroka
(Russian, real surname Vasilyev. November 27 [O.S. November 15] 1823-April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1864) was a Russian painter, one of the most notable members of Venetsianov school. Soroka was born in Pokrovskoye village (Tver Guberniya), in the family of landowner Milyukov. In 1842-1847 he studied art from Alexey Venetsianov then he was returned to his owner. In 1850s-1860s he resided in his home village. He fell in love with his owners's daughter Lydia but was forcibly married to a serf woman. After the emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, Soroka remained under the serfdom system. He made a formal complaint but it was rejected and he was flogged. Soroka's body was found in the baking room where he had hanged himself. His beloved Lydia poisoned herself soon after.