Paolo di Dono, better known as Paolo Uccello (b.1397 - d.1475) was a painter (and also a creator of mosaics) in the employ and patronage of the powerful Florentine Renaissance family, the Medicis. Uccello is considered the father of the art of the perspective.

In paintings such as Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano (probably about 1438-1440), his use of perspective and vanishing point created fundamental changes in the way art depicts spatial relations. See also The Hunt (c. 1460), in which he strives to make the running hounds three dimensional, knowing that the spatial aspect was critical to the viewer's enjoyment.

His most famous work, the painting 'Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano', was commissioned by a wealthy Florentine banker, and was hung in his bedroom until his death. It was painted on three canvases, and originally had an upper half-sphere, on which — art historians speculate — a distant landscape and the sky was painted. It was bequethed to his sons, and was soon after stolen, in what was an audacious art theft orchestrated by Lorenzo de' Medici. In order for it to fit into Lorenzo's bedroom, the half-sphere was sawn off.

The painting's three sections, each depicting a stage of the San Romano war — from beginning, to middle, to end — are now housed in England, Italy, and France respectively.

His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's Vite.

Works

The Battle of San Romano, a triptych consisting of

• Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano
• Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino unseats Bernardino della Ciarda at the Battle of San Romano
• The Counterattack of Michelotto da Cotignola at the Battle of San Romano

See also

• List of painters
• List of Italian painters
• List of famous Italians

External links

• Web Gallery of Art Bio