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(b Borgo San Sepolcro [now Sansepolcro], c. 1415; bur Borgo San Sepolcro, 12 Oct 1492). Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational, calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci, Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master; and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene, memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
| Biography: Piero della Francesca |
Piero della Francesca (ca. 1415-1492), painter, mathematician, and theorist, was one of the most influential Italian artists of the early Renaissance.
Piero della Francesca was the son of Benedetto dei Franceschi, a shoemaker and tanner in Borgo San Sepolcro near Arezzo. Piero was called "della Francesca, " according to Giorgio Vasari, because he was raised by his mother, who had been widowed before his birth.
Piero was mentioned in a document of Sept. 7, 1439, as "being with" Domenico Veneziano when Domenico was painting in S. Egidio and S. Maria Nuova, Florence. During the 1440s Piero was in San Sepolcro and Ferrara. In 1451 he executed a frescoed portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini. On April 12, 1459, he was paid for work (lost) done in the Vatican, Rome. He decorated the choir of S. Francesco, Arezzo, between 1452 and 1466. From 1467 until his death he remained in San Sepolcro except for brief periods in Bastia (1468), Urbino (1469), and Rimini (1482). He served on the town council of San Sepolcro and was a member of the Company of St. Bartholomew. His will is dated July 5, 1487. Vasari relates that the artist was blind and had to be led about by a boy during his last years. Piero died on Oct. 12, 1492.
The Baptism of Christ is a good introduction to Piero's style. Within an arched frame the baptism is taking place in a landscape strikingly similar to the countryside around San Sepolcro. The static, dour figures arranged in regular geometric patterns across the panel's surface are lit by the limpid, luminous Umbrian light. To the left, a trio of angels restricts the view into the distance; to the right, space opens up to reveal a disrobing figure and, further back, a group of bearded patriarchs before a distant landscape. In this picture Piero showed a concern for rational, measurable space, luminosity, and pearly colors. No documents are associated with this picture. Some scholars consider it Piero's earliest work, about 1440-1445; others date it in the early 1450s.
The legend of the True Cross in the choir of S. Francesco, Arezzo, is Piero's most extensive fresco cycle. The scenes are filled with impassive, static figures that impart a soothing quietness to the various episodes. Even in the battle scenes there is a sense of order and quiet rather than confusion and noise. His interest in clearly articulated, rational space can be seen in the Meeting of Solomon with the Queen of Sheba; his interest in the effects of light in the Dream of Constantine, the first realistic nocturnal scene in Italian art. These murals were painted between 1452, the date of the death of Bicci di Lorenzo, the artist first commissioned to paint them, and Dec. 20, 1466, when a document referred to them as complete.
Other noteworthy works from Piero's mature period are the Flagellation, a panel; the Madonna del Parto, a fresco in the cemetery chapel at Monterchi; and the Resurrection, a detached fresco. In the Resurrection the life-size Risen Christ steps wearily from his sarcophagus while looking directly out at the beholder. Piero depicts him as a manly figure with the awesome vigor of a Byzantine Pantocrator. Behind Christ a mauve Umbrian landscape is lit by the moist, pearly light of dawn, and in the foreground four soldiers are sleeping.
Piero was aware of Flemish painting, as can be seen in his Nativity. He probably knew the art of Rogier van der Weyden and may have met him, for Rogier was in Ferrara the same time (ca. 1450) as Piero. He would certainly have known Justus of Ghent, who served the court at Urbino. The Flemish qualities in Piero's work include his use of the oil paint technique and some iconographic types, such as the Madonna del Parto and the Madonna of Humility in the Nativity.
In 1465 Piero executed a diptych portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, and his wife. The artist's major work for Federigo was the altarpiece, Madonna with Saints and Donor, which dates in the late 1470s.
Piero wrote three treatises. De prospectiva pingendi, written before 1482, deals with linear perspective and is still the definitive work on the subject. The other treatises are concerned with painting and business mathematics.
Further Reading
All modern scholarship concerning Piero della Francesca derives from the pioneering work of Roberto Longhi. Longhi's works, which date from 1914 to 1942, are in Italian, but the fruits of his discoveries have been incorporated in English-language works. Kenneth Clark's readable monograph is Piero della Francesca (1951; 2d ed. 1969). Also useful is Piero Bianconi, All the Paintings of Piero della Francesca (trans. 1962). Bernard Berenson wrote interesting essays on Piero in his Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1897; 2d rev. ed. 1909) and Piero della Francesca; or, The Ineloquent in Art (1954).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Piero della Francesca |
Bibliography
See studies by K. Clark (2d ed. 1970), C. de Tolnay (1966), A. Angelini (1985), and J. and M. Gilland (1988).
| Wikipedia: Piero della Francesca |
| Piero della Francesca | |
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| Birth name | Piero della Francesca |
| Born | 1415 [1] Sansepolcro, Italy |
| Died | October 12, 1492 Sansepolcro, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Field | Painting, Fresco |
| Movement | Italian Renaissance |
| Works | The Baptism of Christ Flagellation of Christ Brera Madonna |
Piero della Francesca (c. 1415[1] – October 12, 1492) was an Italian artist of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries, he was known as a mathematician and geometer as well as an artist, though now he is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its serene humanism and its use of geometric forms, particularly in relation to perspective and foreshortening. Most of his work was produced in the Tuscan town of Arezzo.
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Piero was born in the village of Borgo Santo Sepolcro[1], Tuscany (where he also died), to Benedetto de' Franceschi, a tradesman, and Romana di Perino da Monterchi, belonging to the small nobility of Tuscany, as part of Florentine and Tuscan Franceschi noble family.
He may have learned his trade from one of several Sienese artists working in San Sepolcro during his youth. It is known that Piero apprenticed in Florence with Domenico Veneziano, with whom he worked in 1439 on frescoes for the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova (church of Sant'Egidio, now lost). He also knew Fra' Angelico, who introduced him to the other leading masters of the time, Masaccio and Brunelleschi.
In 1442 he returned to San Sepolcro where, three years later, he received the commission for altarpiece of the church of the Misericordia (including the Madonna della Misericordia), which he was to complete only in the early 1460s. In 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of Sant'Andrea of Ferrara, also lost. His influence was particularly strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura.
Two years later he was in Rimini, working for Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. In this sojourn he executed the famous fresco of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta Praying in Front of St. Sigismund as well as the portrait of the condottiero. There he also met another famous Renaissance mathematician and architect, Leon Battista Alberti. Later he moved to Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna.
In 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452-1456.
His cycle of frescoes depicting the Legend of the True Cross is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from legendary medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found. These stories were collected in the "Golden Legend" of Jacopo da Varazze (Jacopo da Varagine) of the mid 13th century. [2]
In 1453, he returned to San Sepolcro where, the following year, he signed a contract for the polyptych in the church of Sant'Agostino. A few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome: here he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, for frescoes in Vatican Palace which have also been destroyed. To this period belongs The Flagellation (c. 1460), one of the most famous and controversial pictures of the early Renaissance. As discussed in own entry, it is marked by an air of geometric sobriety, in addition to presenting a perplexing enigma as to the nature of the three men at right forefront. Other notable works of Piero della Francesca's maturity include the Baptism of Fire, the Resurrection and the Madonna del parto. At Urbino, where he was in the service of Federico III da Montefeltro, he met Melozzo da Forlì and Luca Pacioli. Here he painted the famous double portrait of Federico and his wife Battista Sforza, now in the Uffizi, as well as the Madonna of Senigallia and the Nativity. His portraits in profile take their inspiration from Roman coins.
Piero della Francesca is documented in Rimini in 1482. His will was made in 1487. In his later years, painters such as Perugino and Luca Signorelli frequently visited his workshop. According to Vasari, he went blind in old age.
He died at Sansepolcro, on the very day that Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Americas.
His deep interest in the theoretical study of perspective and his contemplative approach to his paintings are apparent in all his work, including the panels of the S. Agostino altarpiece.
Three treatises written by Piero are known to modern mathematicians: Abacus Treatise (Trattato d'Abaco), Short Book on the Five Regular Solids (Libellus de Quinque Corporibus Regularibus) and On Perspective for Painting (De Prospectiva Pingendi). The subjects covered in these writings include arithmetic, algebra, geometry and innovative work in both solid geometry and perspective. Much of Piero’s work was later absorbed into the writing of others, notably Luca Pacioli. Piero’s work on solid geometry appears in Pacioli’s De Divina Proportione, a work illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci.
Tomaoko Suzuki's new 2006 crib for St Martin-in-the-Fields, to be displayed in Trafalgar Square, cited della Francesca as an inspiration.[3] [4]
Bohuslav Martinů wrote a three movement work for orchestra entitled Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca. Dedicated to Rafael Kubelik, it was premiered by Kubelik and the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1956 Salzburg Festival.
Cf. * Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus, corredato della versione volgare di Luca Pacioli [fac-sim du Codice Vat. Urb. Lat. 632]; eds. Cecil Grayson,... Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Carlo Maccagni. Firenze, Giunti, 1995. 3 vol. (68 ff., XLIV-213, XXII-223 pp.). ISBN 88-09-01020-5
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