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Updated: June 26, 2025
Ridolfo had a brother called Don Bartolommeo in the Angeli, a seat of the Monks of Camaldoli in Florence, who was a truly religious, upright, and worthy man; and Ridolfo, who loved him much, painted for him in the cloister that opens into the garden that is, in the loggia where there are the stories of S. Benedict painted in verdaccio by the hand of Paolo Uccello, on the right hand as one enters by the door of the garden a scene in which that same Saint, seated at table with two Angels beside him, is waiting for bread to be sent for him into the grotto by Romanus, but the Devil has cut the cord with stones; and the same Saint investing a young man with the habit.
Donatello said to him one day when he found him alone at work on the Christ and St. Thomas, which he had been commissioned to paint over the door of the church dedicated to that saint in the Mercato Vecchio. "Thou shalt see it some day, let that suffice thee," Uccello answered.
Uccello was a most laborious student of animal life and so absorbed in the mysteries of perspective that he preferred them to bed; but he does not seem to have been able to unite them. He was a perpetual butt of Donatello. It is told of him that having a commission to paint a fresco for the Mercato Vecchio he kept the progress of the work a secret and allowed no one to see it.
Before his time the painters had not studied the question of perspective scientifically. Giotto had made no attempt at it, and Masaccio only came nearer to realising it by chance. Brunelleschi, the architect, laid down its first principles, but it was Uccello who first put these principles into practice in painting, and thereby paved the way for his successors to walk firmly upon.
The laws of perspective and foreshortening were worked out by Paolo Uccello and Brunelleschi. New methods of colouring were attempted by the Peselli and the Pollajuoli. Abandoning the conventional treatment of religious themes, the artists began to take delight in motives drawn from everyday experience.
Could anyone be moved by the verisimilitude of Uccello? I forget whether that is what Vasari commends: what I am sure of is that he was moved by the same beauties that move us. The fact is, it matters hardly at all what words the critic employs provided they have the power of infecting his audience with his genuine enthusiasm for an authentic work of art.
No, they issue out of the workshops of the stone-mason, of the goldsmith, of the worker in bronze, of the sculptor. Vasari has preserved the tradition that Masolino and Paolo Uccello were apprentices of Ghiberti; he has remarked that their greatest contemporary, Masaccio, "trod in the steps of Brunelleschi and of Donatello."
And with the antique, Fra Angelico rejected all the other artistic influences and aims of his time, the time not of Giotto or of Orcagna, but of Masaccio and Uccello, of Pollaiolo and Donatello.
The monks, bursting with laughter, went their way, and told the story to their abbot, who at length prevailed on Uccello to return to his work on condition that he would order him no more dishes made of cheese. Uccello was a man of very eccentric character and peculiar habits; but he was a great lover of art, and applauded those who excelled in any of its branches.
Lorenzo Monaco Fra Angelico Mariotto Albertinelli turns innkeeper The Venetian rooms Giorgione's death Titian Mantegna uniting north and south Giovanni Bellini Domenico Ghirlandaio Michelangelo Luca Signorelli Wild flowers Leonardo da Vinci Paolo Uccello.
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