The Hunt in the Forest
painting by Paolo Uccello
The Hunt in the Forest (also known as The Hunt by Night or simply The Hunt) is a painting by the Italian artist Paolo Uccello, made around 1470. It is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England.
The painting is an example of linear perspective in Renaissance art, a mathematical system developed to create the appearance of depth on a flat surface. To do this, Uccello created a grid on the panel and diminished the scale of the figures, animals, and objects in relation to a central vanishing point.
Paolo Uccello was known for perspective work and his paintings of animals and landscapes. Due to this his nickname, Uccello('Bird') alludes to his depictions of the natural world. He was also known to be a versatile artist who also worked on mosaic or stained glass commissions.
The panel was probably part of a cassone, a painted chest associated with marriage in the Italian Renaissance.
It was Uccello's last known work before his death in 1475.
In popular culture
Uccello's painting is featured in the "Point of Vanishing" episode of the British TV series, Lewis.
The public source identifies “The Hunt in the Forest” as painting by Paolo Uccello. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hunt, Forest and painting.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Hunt in the Forest”, the useful work is to connect “painting by Paolo Uccello” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3649296. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1470 and 1475.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Hunt in the Forest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.