Uccello, Paolo c.1396-1475
Florentine painter

Born in Pratovecchio, near Florence, he belonged to the Early Renaissance period, and was primarily concerned with developing the new science of perspective in painting, as in The Flood (c.1450, Sta Maria Novella, Florence). He was originally apprenticed to Lorenzo Ghiberti but is more closely associated with the circle of Donatello. During his lifetime he became unfashionable with patrons and was forgotten until the 20th century when Abstract artists found their own concerns anticipated in his richly patterned compositions. Uccello's style is most evident in the three large-scale panels of the Battle of San Romano (1454-57, London, Paris and Florence) executed as decorations for the Palazzo Medici. The Rout of San Romano panel, now in the National Gallery, London, is a highly decorative arrangement of diagonal lances, with receding ranks of cavalry depicted in clearly defined space. He also painted in a romantic style, as in St George and the Dragon (c.1460, National Gallery, London) and The Hunt in the Forest (1468, Ashmolean, Oxford), where the horizontal arrangement draws the viewer's eye to a receding central point.