Paolo Uccello « Vacarmes en Toscane, La Bataille de San Romano » (1999)

Overview

These three very big panels scattered in three different museums (London, Paris and Florence) are considered to be a sort of manifesto of the new art of the 15th century. The rediscovery of the principles of perspective of the ancient Greek treatises, the innovations of an architect like Brunelleschi or a goldsmith like Ghiberti were put to good use by painters to render space and depth. But, in Uccello’s work, in addition there is, besides the passionate quest for perspective, an intense curiosity for geometric shapes, for colour and above all for movement. The subject of The Battles of San Romano : an obscure battle in the Tuscan hills, in 1432, between the mercenaries of Florence and those of Sienna. Paolo made it into a feast for the eyes and the mind and invented paradoxical images which had consequences right up to the cubist and surrealist painters.