His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano (for a long time these were wrongly entitled the "Battle of Sant' Egidio of 1416").Paolo worked in the Late Gothic tradition, and emphasized colour and pageantry rather than the Classical realism that other artists were pioneering. His style is best described as idiosyncratic, and he left no school of followers. He had some influence on twentieth century art and literary criticism.

Full title ‘Niccolò Mauruzi 
da Tolentino at the Battle 
of San Romano’
Wood, originally arched top, 
181.6 x 320 cm. No. 583, 
Purchased, 1857.

This brilliantly coloured and structured painting depicts part of the battle of San Romano, 
fought between Florence and Siena in 1432. The central figure is Niccolò da Tolentino, 
the leader of the victorious Florentine forces.

The panel is one of a set of three. The other two are in Florence and Paris. 
They were painted for the Medici family, sometime between 1435 and 1460.

The pictures reflect both courtly decoration, such as tapestry, and
Renaissance scientific picture- making, notably in the use 
of single vanishing-point perspective.

The Battle of San Romano
Perspective
Uccello studied perspective of both space and individual objects. 
Objects like the knight’s body at the front of the picture are foreshortened. 
At two metres high one would look up and the shape would seem correct. 
This can be approximated by kneeling before the picture. 
The lines of the foreground recede to a single vanishing point, though not accurately. 
Uccello may have been trying to use Alberti’s perspective theories. 
The horizon, incorrectly, does not appear at the height of the vanishing point. 
This might have looked more natural with the original arched tops.

Paolo [Uccello]... discovered a method for standing his figures firmly on the 
plane of the floor while foreshortening them bit by bit, making them 
recede and diminish in proportion; formerly this was done 
without any set method... Paolo stayed up all night in his study, 
and when his wife called him to bed he would say: ‘
Oh, what a lovely thing this perspective is!’   Vasari