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 :. | rimini, san francesco fresco and tempera | Federigo da Montefeltro and his Wife Battista Sforza (mk45) | detail of plate 90 | the triumph of battista sforza | the legend of the true cross, detail |
Related Artists:
Philip Leslie Hale
1865-1931
Bernard Hall
Artist, teacher, Director of Melbourne??s National Gallery and Felton Bequest advisor English-born Australian, 1859-1935 was an English-born Australian artist. Hall was born at Liverpool, England. The son of a Liverpool broker of the same family as Captain Basil Hall, writer of books of travel, he was well educated and grew up in an atmosphere of culture. He studied painting at South Kensington, Antwerp and Munich, and worked for some to years in London. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and was one of the original members of the New English Art Club. On the death of George Frederick Folingsby in 1891 he was appointed director of the National Gallery of Victoria at Melbourne, and began his duties in March 1892. He held the position for 43 years aria many of the well-known painters of Australia were trained by him in the gallery painting school. He also acted as adviser to the trustees for purchases for the gallery and art museum, and when the munificent bequest of Alfred Felton was received his responsibilities were much increased. In 1905 he went to England to make purchases under this bequest, and although the amount then placed in his hands was comparatively small, he made better use of what was available than any subsequent adviser of his time. After his return he was expected to advise on everything submitted that might find a place in an art museum and, although he never claimed to be an expert in all these things, he supplemented his knowledge with hard reading and made cornparatively few mistakes. Hall's own paintings were usually interiors, nudes, or paintings of still life. He was often represented at the Victorian Artists' and other societies' exhibitions and held several one-man shows, but he was kept so busily employed as director and adviser, that his paintings had to be done at week ends and during vacations. In February 1934 he again went to London as adviser to the Felton trustees and died there on 14 February 1935. He was married twice in 1894 to Miss E. M. Shuter and in 1912 to Miss G. H. Thomson, who with one son by the first marriage and two sons and a daughter by the second marriage, survived him. Hall was a tall man of distinguished appearance, courteous but slightly austere in manner, with strong convictions, and little sense of compromise. He was extremely conservative in almost everything from his art to his politics.
MacDonald, Daniel
Irish Painter, 1821-1853