Paolo Uccello (1396/7-1475) was an Italian artist. He was a pioneer of perspective and foreshortening, where through shifts in perspective and optical illusions, objects in his paintings appear shorter than they are in reality.
He trained under Lorenzo Ghiberti, and his later work shows Ghiberti's gothic influence. He worked on mosaics in Venice, then moved to Florence in 1431. In 1436 he painted a fresco of an equestrian statue which shows his use of foreshortening - tricking the eye into seeing a statue rather than a painting. After this he designed stained-glass windows for the city's cathedral, after which he continued working in a more decorative style than before.
Major works
Aside from his equestrian painting of John Hawkwood (known as Giovanni Acuto in Italy), he also painted the Four Prophets in the cathedral in Duomo, Florence, and perhaps his greatest work, the Deluge, in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.