UCCELLO, PAOLO (1397-1475), Florentine painter. His name was Paolo di Dono, but he was commonly called Uccello from his love of painting birds. He was born in Florence, the son of a surgeon barber. When about ten years of age he was apprenticed to Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was then engaged on his first doors of the Florentine Baptistery. It is not known who was Paolo's master in painting, and only a small number of his works have survived. He went to Venice in 1425 and designed a mosaic of St. Peter for the façade of St. Mark's. On his return to Florence in 1433 he was employed in the cathedral; he painted the equestrian figure of Sir John Hawkwood, an English adventurer and soldier of reputation, who had died in the service of Florence in 1393. The painting, now hanging over the door of one of the aisles, was transferred from wall to canvas in 1842. It is a chiaroscuro in terra verde, the first equestrian picture of the Renaissance. In 1443 Paolo designed cartoons for the circular windows of the cupola. A year later he probably went to Padua, perhaps in the company of his friend Donatello. His paintings there of giants, in chiaroscuro, at the entrance of the Casa Vita liani, were much admired by Mantegna. They are, unfortunately, no longer extant. Of the frescoes in the cloisters of S. Maria Novella, Florence, showing the stories of the Creation and the Deluge, only fragments remain. The series of three battlepieces,
representing the Rout of San Romano, dispersed in the galleries of Florence, Paris and London, once formed part of the decora tion of a large ground floor room, the bedchamber of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in the Medici (Riccardi) palace. The Louvre has a panel, much repainted, of the portraits of Giotto, Brunellesco, Donatello, Antonio Manetti and himself. Paolo's last work is said to have been a fresco painted over the door of the church of S. Tommaso in the Mercato Vecchio. This work apparently met with the disapproval of his friend, Donatello, and Paolo thereupon gave up painting and devoted himself to the study of perspective. He died on Dec. Io, 1475. He had a fine feeling for the decorative value of shapes and colour. He excelled in the representation of the picturesque armour and costumes of his time, and introduced birds, horses and animals of all kinds. He contributed much towards the development of the art of representing natural objects in three dimensional space.
See Vasari, Vite (edit. Milanesi) ; Herbert Horne, Monthly Review (Oct. 1901) ; Kern, "Der Mazzocchio des P. Uccello" (J, preusz. K., xxxvii., 1915) ; Sir Dominic Colnaghi, A Dictionary of Florentine Painters (1928). (I. A. R.)