Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1422-1492 Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational, calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci, Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master; and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene, memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant.   Related Paintings of Piero della Francesca :. | Polyptych of the Misericordia | The Resurrection. | the legend of the true cross, detail | saint jerome and a worshipper | Saint Jerome and a Donor |
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Solon H. Borglum
American Sculptor, 1868-1922,was an American sculptor. Born in Ogden, Utah, he was the younger brother of Gutzon Borglum and uncle of Lincoln Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame. The son of Danish immigrants who settled on the great plains, Solon Borglum spent his early years as a rancher in western Nebraska. Though he later lived in Paris and New York and achieved a reputation as one of America's best sculptors, it was his depiction of frontier life, and especially his experience with cowboys and native American peoples, on which his reputation was founded. Borglum studied under Louis Rebisso in Cleveland and in Paris. He specialized in depicting people and scenes of the American West. He moved to the Silvermine neighborhood of New Canaan, Connecticut, where he helped found the "Knockers Club" of artists. His brother, Gutzon, lived in nearby Stamford,
CANTARINI, Simone
Italian painter, Bolognese school (b. 1612, Pesaro, d. 1648, Pesaro) Simone Cantarini (also known as Simone da Pesaro; 12 April 1612 - 1648) was an Italian painter and etcher of the Bolognese School of painting. Cantarini was born in Oropezza near Pesaro, then part of the Papal States. Initially he was a pupil of the Venetian Claudio Ridolfi and Pesarese Giovanni Giacomo Pandolfi, and then, for about 4 years (1635-1639), of Guido Reni. He soon fought with his mentor, and did not return to Bologna till after Reni had died (1642). His pictures are generally derivative. Some of his works have been mistaken for examples of Reni. Among his principal paintings are St. Anthony, at Cagli; the Magdalene, at Pesaro; the Transfiguration in the Brera Gallery, Milan; the Portrait of Guido, in the Bologna gallery; and St. Romuald, in the Casa Paolucci. His most celebrated etching is Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, honoring the heraldic arms of Cardinal Borghese.
Bernardino Pinturicchio
c.1452-1513.Italian painter. He collaborated with Perugino in 1481-2 in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, and quickly established his reputation as a painter of distinctive and picturesque decorative cycles. His most important commissions included the decoration (1492-4) of the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican Palace, Rome, for Pope Alexander VI and the large fresco cycle (1502-1507/8) in the library of Siena Cathedral, depicting the Life of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini