Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) 
- Name:
- Paolo Uccello / Paolo di Dono, known as
- Dates:
- Florence, 1397- 1475
- Attivitą:
- painter
- Places:
-
Florence, Venice, Prato, Padua, Urbino
- Biographical information:
-
Paolo was born in Florence in 1397 to Dono di Paolo, barber and surgeon of Pratovecchio who became a Florentine citizen in 1373, and Antonia di Giovanni di Castello del Beccuto, of a noble and wealthy Florentine family originating from Perugia.
In 1407 and in 1412 Paolo di Dono is cited among the assistants of Lorenzo Ghiberti, engaged in working on the north door of the Baptistery. Paolo was engaged in particular in the ‘rinettatura’ or polishing of the bronze animals in the frieze of the door.
In 1414 he registered in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries. In October of the following year he enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca. These actions confirmed the beginning of the painter’s independent activity.
His first surviving work is the tabernacle of Lippi and Macia belonging to a villa of the Bartoli family (1416). The cycle of the Stories from Genesis on the east wall of the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella is hotly debated. The start of this cycle is in fact variously dated before or after the trip to Venice made by Paolo in 1425. Paolo set off for the Serenissima after having dictated his will and testament, and remained there for at least five years. He executed a mosaic St. Peter on the facade of the Basilica di San Marco, which was destroyed in the seventeenth century. Also attributed to him are the cartoons for other mosaics in the Basilica, including those for the architecture of the Scenes from the Life of the Virgin by Michele Giambono in the chapel of the Mascoli.
The tax return of 1431 shows that Paolo was again in Florence.
In 1435-36 he began work on the frescoes of the Scenes from the Life of the Virgin, Scenes from the Life of St. Stephen, Saints and Virtues in the upper order of the Chapel of the Assunta in the Duomo of Prato. He then unexpectedly interrupted the enterprise, passing it on to his assistant, Andrea di Giusto. In fact in 1436 Paolo was urgently recalled to Florence for an important official commission from the Republic: the fresco portraying the Monument to Sir John Hawkwood in the Duomo, which illustrates the prestige by then acquired by the artist who continued to work in the Florentine cathedral for a decade. Paolo signed his works ‘PAULI UGIELLI’ (that is, ‘Uccello’); Vasari (1568) explains that the artist derived this appellative from his passion for animals, and for birds in particular.
The date 1431 or 1437 can be read on the fresco recently discovered in San Martino in Bologna, portraying the Adoration of the Child.
Around 1438 he painted The Battle of San Romano, the artist’s masterpiece consisting of three painted panels now divided between the National Gallery in London, the Uffizi in Florence and the Louvre in Paris. This work - as recent documentary research has revealed (Caglioti 2000) - was commissioned by Leonardo Bartolini Salimbeni and then transferred to Palazzo Medici by Lorenzo il Magnifico about fifty years later. As these famous panels show, Paolo was passionately interested in experiments with perspective. He loved to exercise in this by drawing the ring-shaped headpieces known as mazzocchi, goblets and other forms, translating them into stereometric bodies (Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe).
Between 1443 and 1445 Paolo received various payments for important works in the Duomo: the gigantic clock on the interior facade and the cartoons for some of the stained glass windows in the roundels of the drum of the cupola (Resurrection and Nativity still in situ, an Annunciation that has been lost and an Ascension that was never executed).
In 1445 he went to Padua, possibly summoned there by Donatello. In the Venetian city he painted a series of Illustrious Men or Giants (since lost) in Casa Vitaliani.
Having returned to Florence, after 1447 Paolo painted the Scenes from the Lives of the Hermits in the cloister of San Miniato; the frescoes are very damaged and now illegible. In these same years he also resumed and completed the fresco cycle in the Chiostro Verde in Santa Maria Novella, painting the most famous episodes portraying Scenes from the Life of Noah.
In 1452, when he was well over fifty, he married Tommasa di Benedetto Malifici, by whom he had a son, Donato, the following year and three years later a daughter, Antonia.
Between 1465 and 1469 he sojourned repeatedly in Urbino, accompanied by his son Donato, working for the court of Federico da Montefeltro. It was probably for this milieu that he painted the elegant panel showing St. George and the Dragon (Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André). Here he also painted the Profanation of the Host, the predella panel of the altarpiece of the Communion of the Apostles by Joos van Ghent in the church of Corpus Domini (now in Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche). Also dating to this late phase is the panel showing The Hunt in the Forest (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum).
In the tax return of 1469 Paolo declares that he is living in Florence in a state of extreme indigence and with a sick wife.
He died in 1475 and was buried in Santo Spirito.
informazioni generali - apparati e documentazione
