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 Baptism of Christ | the legend of the true cross, detail | the legend of the true cross, detail | Saint Michael | Polyptych of the Misericordia: Archangel Gabriel |
Related Artists:
RICHTER, Johan
Swedish painter, Venetian school (b. 1665, Tukholma, d. 1745, Venezia).was a Baroque painter, born in Sweden, but painting mainly landscapes or veduta of Venice. Richter was born in Stockholm and died in Venice. He was known to be active in Venice by 1717. He was influenced by Luca Carlevarijs.
Isenbrandt, Adriaen
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1500-1551 South Netherlandish painter. He became a master in the Bruges Guild of St Luke in 1510, at which time the records specify that he was a 'stranger' and childless. Shortly afterwards he married Maria Grandeel, who bore him one child (d 1512). After his wife's death in 1537, Isenbrandt married Clementine de Haerne, with whom he had three daughters. One further daughter was born through an extra-marital relationship with the innkeeper Katelijne van Brandenburch. According to contemporary sources, Isenbrandt was famous and well-to-do. He held important posts in the Bruges Guild of Sculptors and Saddlemakers, serving as deacon nine times between 1518 and 1538 and as governor twice (1526-7 and 1537-8).
OCHTERVELT, Jacob
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1634-1682 Dutch painter. According to Houbraken, he and Pieter de Hooch were fellow students of the Dutch Italianate Nicolaes Berchem in Haarlem, probably between 1646, when Berchem returned from Italy, and 1655, when Ochtervelt married Dirkje Meesters in the Dutch Reformed Church in Rotterdam. Ochtervelt's earliest known works reveal the influences of a number of Dutch Italianate painters. Landscapes with figures, such as Hunters and Shepherds in a Landscape (1652; Karl-Marx-Stadt, St?dt. Kstsamml.), owe much to Berchem in subject and composition. They may also have been partly inspired by similar landscapes by Jan Baptist Weenix and Ludolf de Jongh. Towards the mid-1650s Ochtervelt began painting garden scenes