Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca

Famous works: The Baptism of Christ; Flagellation of Christ; Brera Madonna

Piero della Francesca (c. 1415 – 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.

Biography

• Early years

Piero was born in the town of Borgo Santo Sepolcro, 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.

Frescoes in San Francesco and mature work

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.

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 its 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. Flagellation of Christ

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.

Work in mathematics and geometry

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.

Selected works

• Polyptych of the Misericordia (1445–1462) - Oil and tempera on panel, base 330 cm, height 273 cm, Pinacoteca Comunale, Sansepolcro
• The Baptism of Christ (c. 1448-1450) - Tempera on panel, 168 x 116 cm, National Gallery, London
• St. Jerome in Penitence (c. 1449-1451) - Oil on panel, 51 x 38 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
• St. Jerome and a Donor (1451) - Panel, 40 x 42 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
• The History of the True Cross (c. 1455-1466) - Frescoes, San Francesco, Arezzo
• The Flagellation of Christ (c. 1460) - Tempera on panel, 59 x 81.5 cm, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino
• Resurrection (c. 1463) - Fresco, 225 x 200 cm, Museo Civico, Sansepolcro
• Madonna del parto (1459–1467) - Detached fresco, 260 x 203 cm, Chapel of the cemetery, Monterchi
• Nativity (c. 1470) - 124.5 x 123 cm, National Gallery, London
• Madonna and Child with Saints (Montefeltro Altarpiece, 1472–1474) - Oil on panel, 248 x 170 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Paired portraits (c. 1472) of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, respectively the Duke and Duchess of Urbino.
• Madonna di Senigallia (c. 1474) - Oil on panel, 67 x 53.5 cm, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino

Inspirations

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.