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 :. | polyptych of saint augustine | Polyptych of the Misericordia | Portrait of Battista Sforza | The Flagellation of Jesus | Adoration of the Holy Wood and the Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba |
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Jan van Scorel
Dutch 1495-1562 Jan Van Scorel Galleries Jan van Scorel (1495, Schoorl - December 6, 1562, Utrecht) was an influential Dutch painter credited with the introduction of High Italian Renaissance art to the Netherlands. It is not known whether he began his studies under Jan Gossaert in Utrecht or with Jacob Cornelisz in Amsterdam, but it certain that it was the master painters he would meet later in his life who would have the greatest effect on his technique. Van Scorel began traveling through Europe in his early twenties, first heading to Nuremberg and then to Austria. It was there, in 1520, that he completed his first representative work, the "Sippenaltar" in St. Martin's church in the village of Obervellach. Giorgione served as a considerable influence on van Scorel during a tenure in Venice. Upon leaving Venice, van Scorel passed through Rome and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His experiences in Jerusalem are depicted in many of his later works. In 1521, van Scorel returned to Rome where he met Pope Adrian VI, who appointed him painter to the Vatican. He himself sat for a portrait. Van Scorel enjoyed the influence of Michelangelo and Raphael, and succeeded Raphael as Keeper of the Belvedere. Upon his return to the Netherlands in 1524, he settled in Haarlem where he began a successful career as a painter and a teacher. Van Scorel was a very educated man and skilled as an engineer and an architect, as well as an artist. He was also multi-lingual, no doubt as a result of his travels. Considered to be the leading Netherlandish Romanist, van Scorel moved to Ghent for painting contracts before moving to Utrecht for the same reason, where he died in 1562, leaving behind a wealth of portraits and altarpieces. Though many of his works fell victim to the Iconoclasm in 1566, some still remain and can be seen primarily at museums in the Netherlands.
John Raphael Smith
English Painter, 1752-1812,English printmaker, publisher and painter. The youngest son of the landscape artist Thomas Smith of Derby (d Bristol, 12 Sept 1767), he was apprenticed to a linen draper at the age of ten and around 1767 became a linen draper's assistant in London. He seems to have taught himself to paint miniatures and produced his first mezzotint in 1769, from Henry Benbridge's portrait of General Pascal Paoli (San Francisco, CA Pal. Legion of Honor). Smith married and opened a draper's shop in Exeter Exchange; about 1773 he began to engrave professionally and sold prints from the same shop.
BRAY, Joseph de
Dutch painter (d. 1664, Haarlem