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Battle
of San Romano
Paolo Uccello (born Paolo di Dono, 1397 – 10
December 1475) was an Italian painter and a mathematician
who was notable for his pioneering work on visual
perspective in art. Giorgio Vasari in his book Lives
of the Artists wrote that Uccello was obsessed by
his interest in perspective and would stay up all
night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing
point. He used perspective in order to create a feeling
of depth in his paintings and not, as his contemporaries,
to narrate different or succeeding stories.
His best known works are the three paintings representing
the battle of San Romano (for a long time these were
wrongly entitled the "Battle of Sant' Egidio
of 1416").
Paolo worked in the Late Gothic tradition, and emphasized
colour and pageantry rather than the Classical realism
that other artists were pioneering. His style is best
described as idiosyncratic, and he left no school
of followers. He has had some influence on twentieth
century art (including the New Zealand painter Melvin
Day) and literary criticism (e.g., in the "Vies
imaginaires" by Marcel Schwob or "Uccello
le poil" by Antonin Artaud).
The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings
by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting
events that took place at the battle of San Romano
in 1432. The paintings are in tempera on wooden panels,
being each over 3 metres long. They were commissioned
by the Bartolini Salimbeni family. They are significant
as revealing the development of linear perspective
in Early Italian Renaissance painting, and are unusual
as a major secular commission.
The paintings were much admired in the 15th century.
They passed into the hands of the Medici family to
whom they belonged for about 300 years. They are now
divided between three collections, the National Gallery,
London, the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Musée
du Louvre, Paris.
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Paolo Ucello - the battle of San Romano
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