Page "Paolo Uccello" Paragraph 3

At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to the famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, designer of the doors of the Florence Baptistery, whose workshop was the premier centre for Florentine art at the time.

Ghiberti's late-Gothic, narrative style and sculptural composition greatly influenced Paolo.

It was also around this time that Paolo began his lifelong friendship with Donatello.

In 1414 Uccello was admitted to the painters ' guild Compagnia di San Luca and just one year later, in 1415, he joined the official painter's guild of Florence Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali.

By the mid 1420s the young Uccello probably left Ghiberti's workshop.

He stayed on good terms with his master and may have been privy to the designs for Ghiberti's second set of Baptistery doors, The Gates of Paradise.

These featured a battle scene, " that might well have impressed itself in the mind of the young Uccello ", and thus influenced The Battle of San Romano.