Uccello, Paolo

(1397-1475)

   Florentine painter. Originally trained as a goldsmith and apprenticed to Lorenzo Ghiberti about 1407-1412, when Ghiberti was working on his first set of doors for the cathedral's baptistery, Uccello executed his early works in the In-ternational Gothic style. Even after he changed his style to incorpo-rate the new Renaissance manner, his works continued to display a love of detail and a use of color and graceful drawing that reflect Gothic influence. In the Renaissance aesthetic associated with Fil-ippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio in Florence, Uccello focused on the problem of linear perspective as most essential to a successful painting. His best-known work is a series of three panel paintings depicting a recent Florentine military victory, The Battle of San Romano (ca. 1455). Earlier examples are a monochrome fresco for the Florentine cathedral representing the English condottiere Sir John Hawkwood on horseback (1436) and The Deluge, another monochrome fresco executed in the church of Santa Maria Novella about 1445. Uccello's use of perspective was never entirely success-ful. His figures have a somewhat unrealistic appearance despite the success of the three-dimensional illusion. Other works by Uccello in-clude St. George and the Dragon and The Hunt (both ca. 1460). Most of his work was done in Florence, but before his conversion to Re-naissance style, he spent the years 1425-1431 in Venice, where he created mosaics for the basilica of St. Mark.