Uccello

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Paolo Uccello was born as Paolo di Dono and was given the name Uccello as a nickname meaning “the bird” because of his love for drawing birds and animals on frieze. He was the son of Dono di Paolo, who was a barber and surgeon and Antonia di Giovanni del Beccuto. He came from a poor family but money never matters to Uccello, his art did. He was a member of the official painters' guild, Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali. He was a perspective and slightly Gothic artist born in the year 1397 in Pratovecchio, which is by Florence, Italy. He was first an apprentice to Donatello at Ghiberti’s workshop and helped him decorate the paradise doors of the Florence Baptistery.

He began working as an artist around the year 1425 in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, making mosaics. The frescoes the Cloister Verde of in the Santa Maria Novella in Florence were his next great works of art. One of the frescoes, “Scenes from the Creation”, he used perspective to fill in any space available; there are also hints of Gothic style which shows he followed Ghiberti.

Around 1439 to 1440, the two versions of “St. George and the Dragon were created. Both versions are very much like a fairy-tale. In this painting the figures are wooden like. In the first version the colors used are brighter while the second version displays colors with depth, and contrast between light and dark more than in the first version. Both place the figures on the foreground. In the first version the dragon charges at the saint while the princess prays. The landscape in the first version is of cultivated fields and city walls with the relatives of the princess in the background, but in the second version the landscape is of a dark and dreary forest of London St. George. In the second version, slight movement can be seen in the sky; the clouds seem to be moving east leading toward the whirl wing. One of the two paintings is at Museé Jacquemart- André, in Paris, France. T...