Ucello

Paolo Ucello
BY: Kam Cheatham

Firstly, my paper is on an Italian painter by the name of Paolo di Dono.   He was born on December 10, 1397 in Florence Italy.   His nickname Ucello came from his fondness for painting birds.   In 1407 he was an apprintice at the age of ten in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s workshop.   This was the center of Florintine art at the time.   He became lifelong friends with an artist by the name of Donatello.   Ghiberti was a big influence on Ucello’s life with his Life-Gothic narrative style and sculptural composition.   Ucello was admitted to the painters’ guild Compagnia di San Lucca in 1414 and one year later joined the offical Florence Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali.   He traveled to Venice to work on the mosaics of San Marco in 1425 but all of these works have been lost.   Ucello married Tomassa Malifici and had his son, Donato (named after Donatello), in 1453.   Then he had his daughter named Antonia in 1456.   Ucello and his son Donato lived in Urbino in 1465 where they spent four years working for the Confraternity of Corpus Domini.   He painted a Predella with the Miracle of the Profaned Host, part of a monument altarpiece.   His wife told people that Paolo used to stay up all night in his study, trying to work out the vanishing points of his perspective, and that when she called him to come to bed he would say: “Oh what a lovely thing this perspective is!”   He died in Florence on December 10, 1475.
Secondly, he did many works in his lifetime including the Green Stations of the Cross in 1446 for the church Santa Maria Novella.   Ucello painted the Scenes of Monastic Life for the church San Miniato al Monte, in Florence. He painted his three best paintings in 1450 to 1456, which was The Battle of San Romano, the victory of the Florentine army over the Sienese in 1432, for the palazzo Medici in Florence.   The three panels of the painting are Niccolò da Tolentino, Bernadino della Ciarda, and the Micheletto da Cotignola.   He also painted The Hunt In...