Crucifixion Saints John Baptist John Evangelist Saint Francis
The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Francis (completed between 1460 - 1465)
The main source for Paolo Uccello's life is Giorgio Vasari's biography, written 75 years after Paolo's death, aside his work, only there are a few contemporary documents that are consider to be official.
According to Vasari, Uccello's first painting was a Saint Anthony between the saints Cosmas and Damianus, a commission for the hospital of Lelmo. Next, he painted two figures in the convent of Annalena. Shortly afterwards, he painted three frescoes with scenes from the life of Saint Francis above the left door of the Santa Trinita church.
People would find these works to be a great and beautiful achievement because this was the first example of how lines could be expertly used to demonstrate perspective and size. As a result, he became a model for artists who wished to craft illusions of space in order to enhance the realness of their paintings
Vasari described Uccello as a rather timid, solitary man, totally absorbed in his studies of perspective and “gifted with a sophisticated mind, he enjoyed investigating complex mechanisms and the strange products of the art of perspective”. Uccello was highly regarded as an artist although “he passed his life in these extravagancies, ending up as poor as he was famous”.
Due to its subject matter and format, The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Francis has been considered to be the central panel of a predella of which the other scenes remain unidentified, nor is it known for where it was painted or for which altarpiece.
Uccello deployed a rigorous use of symmetry, to which both the landscape and other elements contribute. He organised the scene through the separate, isolated figures who establish no communication with each other apart from the shared, inner communication that each establishes with Christ.
In the background the artist depicted an arid, natural setting against which the figures stand out through the rigorous lines that define their outlines and forms, set against the dense ochres of the background. In the foreground of the landscape Uccello placed clumps of dense vegetation, which create a pattern and which surround the rock on which the cross is set. The figures are of a type that the artist used in other compositions: they are thin and wear garments that fall in rhythmical, symmetrical folds (particularly Saint John the Baptist). They also have precise outlines, pointed noses and refined gestures.
Since it was first published by Raimond van Marle as a work by Uccello the attribution has generally been accepted with only a few exceptions. The dating has been more open to debate, and the panel has been considered both a late and an early work by the artist. Boskovits, whose dating is the one now generally accepted, suggested that it was painted around 1460–65, and compared the style and technique with the predella from the oratory of the Annunziata in Avane, now on display in the Museo di San Marco, Florence.
This image is a public domain image, which means either that copyright has expired in the image or the copyright holder has waived their copyright. Franciscan Gallery charges for the access to high resolution copy of the image. Manually restoration was necessary in order to improve quality, without covering the original image.
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