Paolo Uccello was one of the greatest Italian artists working across the divide between Late Gothic and the Renaissance. He was a passionate student of perspective and worked mostly in central and northern Italy.
Although we know little about his life, a handful of his works still strike us today with their almost fairy-tale harmony. His style is remarkably personal and easy to recognise: at times he sets aside the study of his figures in favour of an extreme investigation of perspective.
In this post I want to take you on a journey through the style of Paolo Uccello, exploring some of his most famous masterpieces.
Care to find out more?
Let’s go!
Paolo Uccello, the first steps of a master
His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he went down in history as Paolo Uccello (“uccello” means bird), probably because of his skill at painting animals, birds especially. He was born in 1397 in Pratovecchio, in the Casentino valley, into a family with ties to Florence.
When he was just ten, around 1407, he joined the workshop of Lorenzo Ghiberti as an apprentice, alongside another future giant, Donatello. In those years Ghiberti was working on the north doors of the Florence Baptistery (1403-1424): an extraordinary building site, the best possible school for a talented boy. Uccello stayed until about 1414, then enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the painters’ guild.
He was a contemporary of Masaccio, Brunelleschi and Donatello, and his works are marked by a careful study of perspective and by the volumetric rendering of figures, whether animals or objects. He is even considered one of the forerunners of Piero della Francesca, the great master of fifteenth-century perspective.
The equestrian monument to Giovanni Acuto
Between 1425 and 1431 he was in Venice, where he made a mosaic for the façade of St Mark’s Basilica, now lost. Back in Florence, in 1436 he frescoed one of his masterpieces: the equestrian monument to Giovanni Acuto in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Giovanni Acuto is the Italian name of John Hawkwood, the English condottiero who led the Florentine troops in the fourteenth century. The city wanted to honour him with an equestrian monument, but without paying for a real statue: so Paolo Uccello painted a fresco that pretends to be a bronze-and-marble sculpture.
Paolo Uccello poured all his skill into rendering the monument’s volumes in two dimensions, balancing light and shadow with great intelligence. The precision of the drawing makes the work perfectly harmonious, and the almost monochrome colour (terraverde) gives the viewer the sensation of cold marble.
The Battle of San Romano and perspective
Between 1438 and 1440 or so (some scholars push the date to around 1456) Paolo Uccello painted his most famous work: the Battle of San Romano, a cycle of three large panels depicting the 1432 clash between Florentines and Sienese. Probably made for the Bartolini Salimbeni family, the panels later ended up in the Medici Palace, where Lorenzo the Magnificent treasured them.
Conceived as a single scene, the three panels are today divided among three great European museums:
- the Uffizi Gallery in Florence holds the Unhorsing of Bernardino della Ciarda, the Sienese captain toppling from his horse;
- the National Gallery in London has Niccolò da Tolentino leading the Florentines;
- the Louvre in Paris has the Counterattack of Michele Attendolo alongside the Florentines.
In each panel the perspective shifts, as if we were watching the scene from different viewpoints. Notice the horse kicking backwards, shown in a foreshortened pose, and the broken lances lying on the ground like a geometric grid that suggests depth.
Yet Uccello’s works are not set in a real space, but rather in a universe that is mathematically calculated and at the same time dreamlike and remote. His figures come out almost geometric, defined by a strong outline, and often even the protagonists’ shadows are missing.
Paolo Uccello: Saint George, the dragon and the princess
Some of Paolo Uccello’s works, such as the Saint George and the Dragon now in the National Gallery in London (~1450-55), are steeped in an almost fairy-tale atmosphere. There is also an earlier version at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris.
The London panel is fascinating to read: Saint George is shown as he pierces the dragon holding the princess captive, yet the girl seems to keep the monster on a leash and does not look frightened at all.
If the saint’s legend represents the victory of reason over instinct, this painting has long been debated for what Paolo Uccello really meant to convey.
Behind the dragon there is a dark cave, above which a clear sky shines; behind the knight, instead, a whirlwind rages.
Strange, isn’t it?
The storm stands for the fury and strength of the holy knight, but it sharply contrasts with the calm sky on the princess’s side, as serene and placid as she is. The whirlwind may also symbolise divine intervention: its eye lines up with the knight’s lance, and so could represent the help God granted the fearless rider to free the maiden.
Other panels with the same subject are attributed to the artist, and in all of them the fairy-tale element is strongly emphasised.
Paolo Uccello and Donatello
In his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vasari describes Paolo Uccello as a brilliant mind who nonetheless chased perspective too far, neglecting the rendering of his figures.
One of the best-known anecdotes concerns a piece of advice that Donatello, his close friend, is said to have given him about his bizarre perspective sketches: “Ah, Paolo, this perspective of yours makes you leave the certain for the uncertain.” The story also goes that Uccello spent whole nights over his studies, replying to his wife who called him to bed: “Oh, what a sweet thing this perspective is!”
Paolo Uccello’s painter daughter, one of the first in history
From his marriage to Tommasa Malifici (1452) Paolo Uccello had a daughter, Antonia, who became a Carmelite nun and devoted herself to painting. We know her gifts were admired to the point that she was remembered as a pittoressa (woman painter) on her death record, but sadly none of her works has survived.
She is probably one of the first women painters in Florence and in Italy of whom we have any record: a small distinction that makes this family’s story even more special.
Where to see Paolo Uccello’s works
Paolo Uccello’s works are scattered between Italy and the great European museums:
- in Florence, the Monument to Giovanni Acuto is in the Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), while the Universal Flood frescoes (c. 1447-48) are in the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella; the most famous panel of the Battle of San Romano is at the Uffizi Gallery;
- in London, the National Gallery holds another panel of the battle and the Saint George and the Dragon;
- in Paris, the Louvre has the third panel of the battle, and the Musée Jacquemart-André the first version of Saint George;
- in Urbino (where he worked from 1465 to 1468 for Federico da Montefeltro) survives the predella with the Miracle of the Desecrated Host, at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche.
If you are in Florence, the best way to see the Battle of San Romano in person is to book priority entrance to the Uffizi: you skip the long queues and, in the same visit, you also meet Botticelli, Leonardo and Caravaggio.
Paolo Uccello died in Florence on 10 December 1475, shortly after making his will, and was buried in Santo Spirito. He passed away almost forgotten, yet his impossible perspectives still enchant us: next time you stand in front of one of his panels, try asking yourself whether you are looking at a battlefield or a geometric dream. Which of his works, in your opinion, is the most magical?
