Paolo Uccello - painter

Pioneer of perspective also worked in mosaics

The first panel of Uccello's fresco series, Battle of
San Romano, on display at the National Gallery

Paolo Uccello, who was one of the leading painters in Florence in the 15th century, died on this day in 1475 at the age of 78.

The son of a surgeon, Uccello served an apprenticeship in the workshop of the sculptor and goldsmith Lorenzo Ghiberti but made his own mark as a painter and also as a mosaicist, at one time employed to work on the facade of Basilica di San Marco in Venice.

Younger than Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello, three giants of the Early Renaissance period, Uccello belonged to a generation of artists eager to move away from the flat, decorative forms of traditional Gothic art. His work is more often characterised by clear colours, well-defined outlines and a dramatic narrative, although he retains the fairytale quality of Gothic.

He was noted for his interest in linear perspective, which helped create a sense of depth in many of his paintings. According to Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century painter and architect whose book, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, led him to become known as the first art historian, Uccello was so fixated with perspective that he would stay up all night, seeking to apply his knowledge of mathematics to ensuring the angles in his pictures and the relative scale were exactly right.

Uccello's St George and the Dragon echoed the
typical themes of traditional Gothic art

Uccello’s most celebrated works include a 1456 cycle of paintings depicting the Battle of San Romano, in which a Florentine army defeated Sienese troops in 1432, originally commissioned to adorn the palace of a Florentine politician, Lionardo Bartolini Salimbeni.  The three panels that comprised the cycle are now shared between the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Uffizi in Florence.

His love of perspective, meanwhile, was no better illustrated than in The Flood and The Waters Receding, part of a 1447-48 fresco depicting Scenes from the Life of Noah, which he painted for the Chiostro Verde of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

His St George and the Dragon (c1456), which is also kept by the National Gallery in London), and the Miracle of the Desecrated Host (c1467), housed in Urbino’s Galleria Nazionale, are other notable works.

Uccello was born Paolo di Dono or Paolo Doni. His father was from a wealthy Florentine family and his mother from the noble Del Beccuto family, who had three chapels in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of which Uccello would decorate himself. It is not known with certainty why he came to be known as Paolo Uccello, although he often used birds - uccelli - as well as small animals in his paintings as a device to help create perspective.

At the age of 10, Uccello became an apprentice in the workshop of Ghiberti. It was around the time that Ghiberti was creating the renowned bronze doors for the Florence cathedral's Baptistery, known as The Gates of Paradise.  

Uccello's fascination with perspective is evident
in this section of his Scenes from the life of Noah

Little remains of his work for Ghiberti. The earliest frescoes attributed to him, though now badly damaged, are in the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella and depict episodes from the Creation. 

From 1425 to 1431, Uccello worked as a master mosaicist in Venice. Documentary evidence has come to light suggesting that a mosaic of Saint Peter for the facade of the Basilica di San Marco, which was depicted in Gentile Bellini's 1496 painting, Processione in Piazza San Marco, was Uccello’s. Sadly, if there was such a piece, it no longer exists.  Some floor mosaics within the basilica are more confidently attributed to Uccello.

After returning to Florence, where he was to stay for most of the rest of his life, he executed works for various churches and patrons, most notably the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, the city’s Duomo.

This mosaic on the floor of Basilica San
Marco in Venice is attributed to Uccello

In 1436, Uccello completed a monochrome fresco of an equestrian monument to Sir John Hawkwood in the Duomo. This work exemplified his keen interest in perspective. The condottiero and his horse are presented as if the fresco was a sculpture seen from below. At the same time, a sense of controlled potential energy within the horse and rider were characteristic of the new style of the Renaissance that had blossomed during Uccello’s lifetime.

Later, he painted the four heads of the prophets that surround the clock on the Duomo’s interior west facade clock, and designed a number of stained glass windows.

The three paintings celebrating the Battle of San Romano are thought to have been executed between 1438 and 1440. The three panels were exhibited until 1784 in a room in the Medici Palace on Via Larga in Florence.

Married in 1453 to Tommasa Malifici, Uccello had a son, Donato, with whom he worked towards the end of his life, and a daughter, Antonia, who became a Carmelite nun. 

In poor health, Uccello stopped working in 1470. His last will and testament was dated November 11, 1475, about a month before he died. He was buried in his father's tomb in the church of Santo Spirito in Florence.

The magnificent Florence Duomo, topped by
Brunelleschi's colossal dome, towers over the city

Travel tip:

Florence’s Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore - with its enormous dome by Filippo Brunelleschi and campanile by Giotto, is one of Italy's most recognisable and most photographed sights, the dominant feature of the city’s skyline. From groundbreaking to consecration, the project spanned 140 years and involved a series of architects. Arnolfo di Cambio, who also designed the Basilica of Santa Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio, was the original architect engaged and it was largely to his template that the others worked.  When he died in 1410, 14 years after the first stone was laid, he was succeeded by Giotto, who himself died in 1337, after which his assistant Andrea Pisano took up the project.  Pisano died in 1348, as the Black Death swept Europe, and a succession of architects followed, culminating in Brunelleschi, who won a competition - against Lorenzo Ghiberti - to build the dome, which remains the largest brick-built dome ever constructed.

The facade of the Basilica of Santa Maria
Novella, designed by Leon Battista Alberti

Travel tip:

The Gothic Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, for which Uccello created his Scenes from the Life of Noah fresco series, which included The Flood and The Waters Receding, was built in the 13th century by the Dominicans and can be described as the city’s first great basilica. This church was given the suffix ‘Novella’ - new - because it was built on the site of the 9th-century oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne.  The new church was commissioned by wealthy Florentine wool merchant Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai and designed principally by Leon Battista Alberti. The church, recognisable for its white marble façade, was built between 1456 and 1470. A list of its notable artworks reads like a roll call of masters of Gothic and early Renaissance painting and sculpture, including Botticelli, Bronzino, Brunelleschi, Duccio, Ghiberti, Ghirlandaio, Lippi, Masaccio, Pisano, Uccello and Vasari. The city’s nearby main railway station takes its name from the basilica.

Also on this day:

1813: The birth of composer Errico Petrella

1903: The birth of painter Giuseppe Dossena

1907: The birth of actor Amedeo Nazzari

1921: The birth of football administrator Giuseppe 'Peppino' Prisco

1936: The death of playwright and novelist Luigi Pirandello

Home

Alesso Baldovinetti - painter

One of first to paint realistic landscapes

A self-portrait of Alesso Baldovinetti from a fragment of
damaged fresco, now in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo

The early Renaissance painter Alesso Baldovinetti, whose great fresco of the Annunciation in the cloister of the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence is still intact, was born on this day in 1425 in Florence.

Baldovinetti was among a group described as scientific realists and naturalists in art which included Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello and Domenico Veneziano. Influenced by Uccello’s use of visual perspective, he had a particular eye for detail and his views of the Arno river in his Nativity and Madonna are regarded as among Europe’s earliest paintings of accurately reproduced landscapes.

Veneziano’s influence is reflected in the pervasive light of his earliest surviving works, and he was also greatly influenced by Fra Angelico. Historians believe that in the 1460s Baldovinetti was the finest painter in Florence, although some argue that he did not fulfil all his initial promise.

Born into the family of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Baldovinetti rejected the chance to follow his father’s trade in favour of art.

Baldovinetti's Nativity in the Basilica of Santissimi Annunziata
in Florence with the Arno river in the background

In 1448, he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. It is thought that he assisted with decorations in the church of Sant’ Egidio in Trastevere, with Veneziano and del Castagno, with whom he later collaborated on the frescoes in the Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.

Apart from his frescoes in the Annunziata basilica in Florence, other surviving works include those done for the chapel decorations in the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte, also in his home city.  It is regrettable that he did not help some of his work by using a mixture of yolk of egg and liquid varnish - his own invention - to protect his paintings from damp, but which in the event caused them to deteriorate more quickly.

Baldovinetti worked on several pieces for the church of Santa Trinita, where he painted an altarpiece of the Virgin Mary and child with the saints Gualberto and Benedetto, which is now in the Academy of Florence.

Baldovinetti's Annunziation

During this period, Baldovinetti also gained a reputation as one of the best mosaic workers of the day, earning praise for his restoration of the mosaics at the San Miniato.

Two of his works are in the Uffizi Gallery, including an Annunciation and Madonna and Child with Saints. The National Gallery in London has a Portrait of a Lady in Yellow that for centuries was wrongly attributed to Piero della Francesca, while there is a Madonna and Child in the Louvre in Paris.

Among Baldovinetti’s own pupils was Domenico Ghirlandaio, who went on to become a major figure in the so-called "third generation" of the Florentine Renaissance, a contemporary of Verrocchio and Sandro Botticelli.

Baldovinetti died in August 1499 at the age of 73 and was buried in the Basilica of San Lorenzo.

The facade of the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata
in the San Marco district of Florence

Travel tip:

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata is in the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in the San Marco district of Florence. The church was founded in 1250 and rebuilt by Michelozzo between 1444 and 1481. Frescoes by Andrea del Sarto can be seen in the atrium of the church. Newly wed couples traditionally visit the church to present a bouquet of flowers to a painting of the Virgin by a 13th century monk, where they pray for a long and fruitful marriage.

The church of Santa Trinita, where Balodovinetti
worked on a number of pieces

Travel tip:

The church of Santa Trinita, which overlooks the square of the same name, can easily be reached by walking down the elegant Via de' Tornabuoni towards the Arno. Standing near the Santa Trinita bridge, it was founded in the middle of the 11th century. Originally built in a simple Romanesque style, it was later was enlarged and restored following Gothic lines. The church’s Sassetti Chapel contains 15th-century frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

More reading:

The humble friar who became one of the greatest artists of the 15th century

Why the talent of Sandro Botticelli was forgotten for four centuries

How Piero della Francesca applied geometry and maths to his work

Also on this day:

1628: The death of painter Palma Giovane

1963: The birth of singer Alessandro Safina


Home

Alberto Magnelli - abstract painter

Self-taught artist whose work became known as Concrete Art

Animated Tension (1953): An example of the abstract art of
the Italian painter Alberto Magnelli

The abstract painter Alberto Magnelli, who became a leading figure in the Concrete Art movement, was born on this day in 1888 in Florence.

Concrete Art is described as abstract art that is entirely free of any basis in observed reality and that has no symbolic meaning. It had strong geometric elements and clear lines and its exponents insisted the form should eschew impressionism and that a painting should have no other meaning than itself.

The movement took its name from the definition of concrete as an adjective rather than a noun, meaning ‘existing in a material or physical form’.

It became Magnelli’s focus after he moved to Paris in 1931. Until then, he had experimented in various genres.

Alberto Magnelli taught himself to paint
while on holiday in rural Tuscany

He was born into a comfortable background in Florence, his father coming from a wealthy family of textile merchants.  He never studied art formally but would spend hours in museums and churches looking at paintings and frescoes. He particularly admired the Renaissance artists Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello, and Piero della Francesca.

Magnelli’s first paintings were landscapes, which he began to produce while on holiday in the Tuscan countryside.  His work was good enough for him to submit to the Venice Biennale, as a result of which he made his first sale in 1909.

By 1915, he had moved towards painting in abstract style, having become part of a circle of artists in Florence in which the Futurist Gino Severini was a prominent member and having met Cubists such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger.

After the First World War, in which he did compulsory military service, he continued to paint entirely abstract works but was unhappy that the avant-garde movement in Italy appeared to be supportive of Fascism and returned to painting quiet Tuscan landscapes, and figure studies. These had echoes of the Metaphysical style of Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà.

Some of Magnelli's works, such as The Readers (1931), had
 echoes of the Metaphysical movement in Italian art

Towards the end of the 1920s, suffering a crisis in confidence, he almost gave up painting but decided to return to Paris in the hope of making a fresh start. There he joined the Abstraction-Création group.

Following the invasion of France by the Nazis, during the Second World War, Magnelli and his future wife, Susi Gerson, went to live in Grasse with several other artists. Some of the group, including Gerson, were Jewish so they were forced to hide. Because conventional art materials were in short supply, Magnelli created textural geometric collages using materials such as corrugated cardboard, emery cloth, music paper, stitched wire, and metal plates.

He also made paintings on schoolchildren’s wood-framed slate boards. Many of these were geometric compositions constructed from flat areas of colour and inscribed white lines, while others were inscriptions of purely geometric lines. It was the beginning of Concrete Art. He again exhibited at the Venice Biennale and major galleries organised retrospectives of his work.

Following the Second World War, Magnelli returned to Paris which was to be his home for the rest of his life.  He died there in 1971.

The Giubbe Rosse has been serving customers in Florence's
Piazza della Repubblica since 1896

Travel tip:

Florentine artists of Magnelli’s era used to meet at the Caffè Giubbe Rosse in Piazza della Repubblica, which took its name from the red jackets - giubbe rosse - the waiters still wear to this day. When opened in 1896, it was called Fratelli Reininghaus after the German brothers who founded it. The writer and poet Alberto Viviani called the Giubbe Rosse a "fucina di sogni e di passioni - a forge of dreams and passions".

The central square in Sansepolcro, Tuscany

Travel tip:

Sansepolcro, which is the birthplace of Piero della Francesca,  is a town of 16,000 inhabitants situated about 110km (68 miles) east of Florence and 38km (24 miles) northeast of Arezzo. The historic centre is entirely surrounded with fortified walls, built in the early part of the 16th century. The centre of the town is the Piazza Torre di Berta, named after the 13th-century tower of the same name, off which can be found the impressive Palazzi Pichi and Giovagnoli and the 14th-century cathedral, dedicated to St John the Evangelist.

More reading:

Giorgio di Chirico, founder of the Scuola Metafisica 

Carlo Carrà and the Futurist movement

Giorgio Morandi - master of still life



Also on this day:

1586: The birth of 'lost' composer Claudio Saracini

1878: The birth of career burglar and cult figure Gino Meneghetti

Home

Giorgio Morandi – painter

The greatest master of still life in the 20th century

Giorgio Morandi pictured in
his studio in Bologna in 1953

The artist Giorgio Morandi, who became famous for his atmospheric representations of still life, was born on the day in 1890 in Bologna.

Morandi’s paintings were appreciated for their tonal subtlety in depicting simple subjects, such as vases, bottles, bowls and flowers.

He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna and taught himself to etch by studying books on Rembrandt. Even though he lived his whole life in Bologna, he was deeply influenced by the work of Cézanne, Derain and Picasso.

In 1910 Morandi visited Florence, where the work of Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello also impressed him.

Morandi was appointed as instructor of drawing for elementary schools in Bologna, a position he held from 1914 until 1929. He joined the army in 1915 but suffered a breakdown and had to be discharged.

During the war his paintings of still life became purer in form, in the manner of Cezanne. After a phase of experimenting with the metaphysical style of painting he began to focus on subtle gradations of hue and tone.

Morandi's 1956 painting Natura morta

Morandi became associated with a Fascist-influenced Futurist group in Bologna and was sympathetic to the Fascist Party in the 1920s, although he also had friendships with anti-Fascist figures, which led to him being arrested briefly.

He took part in the Venice Biennale exhibitions, in the Quadriennale in Rome and also exhibited his work in different cities.

He was professor of etching at Accademia di Belle Arti from 1930 until 1956 and was awarded first prize for painting by the 1948 Venice Biennale.

Morandi lived for most of his adult life in Via Fondazza in Bologna with his three sisters until his death from lung cancer in 1964.

He was buried at the Certosa cemetery in Bologna in the family tomb, which bears a portrait of him executed by his friend, the sculptor Giacomo Manzù.

During his life Morandi completed 1350 oil paintings and 133 etchings. He once explained: ’What interests me most is expressing what’s in nature, in the visible world, that is.’

A 1952 still life from Morandi

Morandi is perceived as being one of the few Italian artists of his generation to remain detached from contemporary culture and politics and he is now regarded as one of the best modern Italian painters and the greatest master of still life in the 20th century.

His work has been discussed and written about by many art critics. Director Federico Fellini paid tribute to him in La Dolce Vita, which features his paintings, as does Michangelo Antonioni in La Notte.

The novelists Sarah Hall and Don DeLillo and the poet Ivor Cutler have all written about him. Barack Obama chose two oil paintings by Morandi, which are now part of the White House collection.

A Giorgio Morandi museum - the Museo Morandi - which includes a reconstruction of his studio, was opened in 1993 in Bologna.

Many famous photographers took images of him at his house or in his studio and the interior of his house has been filmed. In 2016 the American photographer Joel Meyerowitz published Morandi’s Object, a book containing his photographs of more than 260 objects that the painter had collected during his life.

Morandi's tomb at the Certosa di Bologna

Travel tip:

The Certosa di Bologna, where Morandi, is buried is a former Carthusian monastery founded in 1334 and suppressed in 1797, located just outside the walls of the city. In 1801 it became the city’s monumental cemetery and would later be praised by Byron in his writings. In 1869 an Etruscan necropolis was discovered there.

Travel tip:

The Museo Morandi, which displays a large collection of works by the painter, is being temporarily housed in the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, which is in Via Don Giovanni Minzoni in Bologna.

Home