Paolo Uccello

Question 1

Battle of San Romano

Where are the other two of the 3?

Answer 1

Louvre and Uffizi in Florence.

Question 2

Who commissioned the Battle of San Romano? And when roughly?

Who owned it then?

Answer 2

Bartolini Salimbeni Family, Minot florentine merchants.
1438-40

Lorenzo de’ Medici (Lorenzo thé Magnificent)

Question 3

When was Battle I’d San Romano commissioned and what does it commemorate?

Answer 3

1432

Florentine victory over rival Sienese forces (from Siena)

Question 4

How did Lorenzo come to own the Battle of San Romano?

What does this show of the period?

Answer 4

Tried to purchase the 3 panels but turned down. Sent some workers to take by force.

1. Great artworks like this have inspired great lust and envy.
2. Medici has such power they could act without consequences from law. Perfect example of the new, non-aristocratic rich banker and merchant classes who were buying art during the Renaissance.

Question 5

Why is Battle of San Romano cited often as a watershed moment in the history of perspective?

How has Uccello achieved this?

Answer 5

Whole scene created with ‘single point perspective’ with orthogonal lines converging to a ongle point.

Broken lances and fallen soldiers create a ‘field of perspective’ with vanishing point further back in the scene.

Question 6

How had artists pictures failed as perspective before Uccello?

Answer 6

Individual figures or objects in perspective but hadn’t maintained the scheme for whole scene (remembering Wilton Diptych)

Question 7

Why is Battle of SR so dark?

Answer 7

Restoration. Giving flat look. Source of inspiration to modern paintings because of its claustrophobic feeling.

Question 8

What has been removed from the Battle of SR?

Why?

Answer 8

Semicircular (spandrel)

Blue sky over the background landscape. Removed by Lorenzo to fit in private study.