The Hunt in the Forest

The painting is an early example of the effective use of perspective in Renaissance art, with the hunt participants, including people, horses, dogs and deer, disappearing into the dark forest in the distance. It was Uccello's last known painting before his death in 1475. It was probably painted as a wall decoration for the home of a sophisticated and wealthy patron. It is a highly original painting both as a nocturnal landscape and as a brilliantly structured composition. It is a rare and unusual survivor of a domestic painting depicting a secular, contemporary subject. Uccello was an early practitioner of mathematical perspective: he mapped out a grid on the panel’s surface as a guide for his design, fixing a central vanishing point. The devices of the huntsman’s spears, the cut branches and logs, the area of water and the decreasing size of the figures and trees, create a sense of depth and motion in the scene.