Piero della Francesca

Italian painter

• Born: c. 1420
• Birthplace: Borgo San Sepulcro, Republic of Florence (now Sansepolcro, Italy)
• Died: October 12, 1492
• Place of death: Borgo San Sepulcro, Republic of Florence (now Sansepulcro, Italy)

Though admired selectively for centuries, Piero’s paintings were not placed among the world’s masterpieces until the twentieth century. His works are now seen as crucial to the development of the characteristic forms and methods of Italian Renaissance painting. Also, Piero wrote the first Renaissance treatise on perspective.

Early Life

Partly because of his being born and reared and later choosing largely to remain in a provincial Tuscan market town, almost nothing is known of the life of Piero della Francesca (pyehr-oh dehl-lah frahn-CHAY-skah) to the age of about twenty. For this reason, the date of his birth, and consequently his age at the time of his dated works, have been subjects of considerable debate. This debate is more significant than such things normally are, for Piero was active during the formative period of the high Italian Renaissance. For a long time, his role in this development was obscured by ignorance, and influences originating in him were attributed to others; later, the pendulum swung the other way. Now his genius is firmly established.

He was born into the Dei Franceschi family (della Francesca is a feminine variant of the name), locally prominent leather merchants, dyers, and farm owners. The first notice of him appears on September 7, 1439, as an assistant to Domenico Veneziano in a series of now-ruined frescoes in the Church of Sant’Egidio in Florence. Later, in 1442, Piero became one of the priori (town councilmen) of San Sepulcro, an office he kept for the remainder of his life, though he did leave the town periodically to work in Florence, Milan, and Urbino.

This provincial, rustic upbringing supplied an essential element in Piero’s mature technique, for the arid, desolate masses of the Apennine foothills provide the brooding, static backgrounds of his scenes of secular and religious history. In this respect, he adapted the scene-framing techniques of Fra Angelico and his master Domenico Veneziano, going beyond them in using natural settings to shape the emotional and iconological contexts of the foreground subjects. That is, he was one of the first to create thematically integrated compositions, in which every detail contributed to the dominant effect. He undoubtedly received the initial impetus toward this totally unified vision during his apprenticeship to Veneziano in Florence, at a time when the dominant artists were, besides his master, Leon Battista Alberti, Luca della Robbia, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, and Andrea del Castagno. Piero had the good fortune to mature at the very moment that advances in perspective theory, form, light, and color seemed to call for fusion in a new technique. In the course of his career, Piero forged that technique.

Life’s Work

Piero’s first known work, an altarpiece commissioned in 1445 for the charitable company known as the Misericordia in his hometown, at first seems to show little evidence of this fusion. This commission, intended to replace an existing work in several segments of different sizes, required him to use the existing panels and frames, thus limiting him to what was by then an antique format. This format dominates the work; at first viewing, the observer is likely to believe that the painting dates from the preceding century, so stiff and compartmentalized do the figures represented appear. Fire damage and overpainting during attempted restorations do not correct the impression. Further study, however, reveals that Piero is here experimenting with novel treatments of light as a means of defining and disclosing form. His light is flushed with color, subtly varied from surface to surface, pervading even the shadows from which it emerges. This is the light of Angelico and Veneziano, but immensely refined in that it takes on and projects texture, in the process inhabiting form. His figures, the clothes they wear, and the volumes they create become tactile, almost palpable. Further, the whole breathes an appropriate, and characteristic, solemnity.

Around 1450, Piero created his first masterwork, Baptism of Christ , for a priory in San Sepulcro. The large panel centers on Christ standing in the ankle-deep flow of a translucent stream winding its way down a Tuscan hillside; John strides out from the right to perform his ministry, while three angels watch from the left, under the arch of a small poplar springing improbably from the very bank of the stream, and a postulant in the middle distance pulls off his tunic to become the next candidate. The painting is an arresting combination of strength and subtlety. The Christ is severe, stark, almost repulsive; his features are harsh, peasantlike, rather brutal, certainly common. He stands resolute, firm, determined to take what is coming to him, even if against or beyond his will. The angels lounge idly yet ceremonially, as if they were paid attendants, early altar boys. The event may inaugurate a revolutionary mission, yet no one is paying much attention to it; it is simply another baptism, and even John seems to be merely resigned to it, going through a formality.

Still, this Christ is as vulnerable as he is determined. His contours swell softly: His skin would quiver to the touch, and his transparent loincloth reveals his essential humanity. Further, his white, columnar body precisely parallels the trunk of the poplar, as if the two were of one kind, two manifestations of the same spirit, sprung from the same root. Similarly, the dove centered above the vessel from which John pours, representing the Third Person of the Trinity, is almost indistinguishable from the adjacent clouds. More remarkable, and in defiance of artistic tradition, God the Father does not appear, not even by disembodied hand. Piero seems to suggest that the Father, nevertheless, is there, as much as Son and Holy Spirit. He is simply more immanent than they, as the Son is also in the tree and the Spirit in the clouds. This revelation of theme in seemingly accidental yet completely integrated detail is the signature of Piero. Typically, every naturalistic detail like the inverted reflection of landscape in the stream is rendered with the utmost fidelity to the natural phenomena.

The Resurrection fresco (c. 1453) is Piero’s best-known work. The subject was the official symbol of the town hence its name and Piero deliberately represents the event as taking place while the sun rises in the rocky hills above the town. Christ mounts the sarcophagus with his left foot, grasping a red-cross standard that unfolds above him. His pale rose-colored robe opens to expose the spear wound. The face is as compelling as that in the Baptism of Christ, but these eyes are simultaneously harrowing they have experienced everything and compassionate, probing into the soul of the viewer. Four soldiers sprawl in front of the tomb, dozing, the back of one resting against the frontal plane of the painting. Though apparently disposed at random, the figures combine with that of the risen Christ in a pattern of interlocking and embedded triangles, creating an impression of great strength and endurance.

In the middle background, the landscape on the left luminous in the shimmering light of dawn is withered and barren, while that on the right is in full leaf. This is the iconographic equivalent of Christ’s remark on the way to Calvary: “If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luke 23:31), referring to the persecution that would follow on his execution. There was a further association of green and withered trees with the Trees of Life and of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, the second of which in legend became both symbolically and actually the agent of human redemption, by furnishing the wood for Christ’s cross. In this painting, Piero created an image in which all the details fuse in a vision of total integrity, in which psychological intensity and doctrinal content reinforce each other.

Piero’s only major fresco cycle, the Legend of the True Cross (1452-1457), is the most ambitious project he attempted: a series of twelve frescoes setting forth a pious medieval legend of complex, and improbable, fantasy. Unfortunately, the entire chancel, on which the frescoes were done, has suffered from water seepage over the ensuing centuries, and much of the surface has been lost and ineptly restored. These restorations were removed, so that what remains of the original can now be seen.

What is there is astonishing. The panels narrate major episodes in the legend, from the fetching of a branch from Eden by Seth to cure his father Adam through Solomon’s burying of a beam and Helena’s discovery of the cross fashioned from it to its recovery from Chosroes by the Emperor Heraclius. Piero arranged them not chronologically but in order to focus on visual, symbolic, and thematic resonances. Thus, for example, scenes dominated by women are set on opposite walls, as are those of battles and those involving visions of the Cross. Further, each panel consists of two paired scenes representing two incidents within a single episode. Independently, these paintings serve as illustrations of rhythmic group composition, Albertian perspective, and visual and thematic integration; together, they constitute one of the most magnificent sequences of painting ever composed, truly remarkable especially for the fidelity of its coloring, so that the landscapes and people represented take on tangible reality.

In the middle of his career, Piero occasionally left San Sepulcro to do some of his most significant work at Urbino, Milan, and Florence. In Urbino, for example, he painted a mysterious Flagellation of Christ (probably 1463-1464), the thematic content of which has been convincingly interpreted. The dignity of his figures, however, the delicacy of light and color, and the austere sincerity of the work have never been in doubt. Also in Urbino, Piero composed complementary portraits of Count Federico da Montefeltro and his wife, Battista Sforza (after 1474), which bear allegorical triumph scenes on their reverses. The portraits show to the highest degree Piero’s fusion of austerity of vision and revelation of character, and the triumphs disclose a blend of imaginative landscape with mythological content. His last known painting, Nativity (1480), reveals modulations of color and light that have never been surpassed; Piero almost makes the air visible.

Though he lived on for some twenty years, he seems not to have returned to painting, busying himself instead in theoretical studies, which included the treatise on perspective and a book on geometry. According to legend, he became blind in the last years of his life.

Significance

Through to the twentieth century, Piero and his work were believed to be remote and somewhat primitive; at best, he was considered a “provincial master” and treated somewhat condescendingly. At this point, it is difficult to understand that neglect. His work is always compelling, particularly in his rare union of force and subtlety. Even when disfigured by time or made to appear crude by clumsy overpainting, his scenes are honest, direct, forthright, and sincere. Further study always reveals what can only be called marvelous hidden harmonies underlying fully integrated compositions. It is almost as if Piero thought out each painting completely and then executed what he saw in his mind’s eye. Every detail falls into its necessary place, supporting and subordinated to the whole.

Probably the most striking aspect of Piero’s painting is a quality not immediately perceptible, since the underlying unity and harmony of his work is accomplished by means of subtle geometric patterns; abstract shapes triangles, parallelograms, rhomboids emerge through the living figures of the surface. These anchor his compositions, creating weight and mass, imparting a solid dignity rivaled only by Masaccio and Castagno. These geometrical patterns contribute to the formal emphasis of his work, giving it almost palpable substance, as if his scenes have more body than real life. It is easy to understand why the abstract painters and formalists of the early twentieth century should have made a hero out of Piero; he anticipated many of their interests.

Other qualities of his work also had to wait until the twentieth century for proper appreciation. Among them is his creation of human characters who, though outwardly commonplace, even crude, are absolutely convincing in their individuality and humanity. For this reason, reproductions of his incidental figures became favorites of painters and art students during the ascendancy of French painter Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Still, there are elements in Piero’s work that stand independent of such fashionable revivals. The lyricism of his colors, for example, is a pure joy, transcending the accomplishments of everyone before Leonardo da Vinci. Coincident with that is his use of light, especially in the way he combines the two to bring out the solidity and mass of his figures. Finally, there is his use of landscape to integrate the composition of his paintings and to unify them thematically. No one had done this kind of thing before him; no one ever did it better.

Bibliography

Battisti, Eugenio. Piero della Francesca. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972. This text is the standard academic study of Piero, fully documented, with excellent reproductions, a complete bibliography, and thorough discussions of the paintings and their artistic and historical contexts. The explanations of the paintings are outstanding, particularly because the quality of the plates is so high.

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. One of the standard reference works for Quattrocento art, this offers a particularly incisive account of Piero’s pivotal role in the development of painting. Also contains useful insights into his failure to attract general appreciation until the twentieth century.

Clark, Kenneth. Piero della Francesca. 2d ed. Reprint. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981. An early account of Piero’s work and development, this is perhaps the most accessible study of the paintings. Some of the material and the plates are dated, requiring correction and amplification in later studies.

Gilbert, Creighton. Change in Piero della Francesca. Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1968. This is a groundbreaking account of Piero’s stylistic development, offering a more thorough technical analysis of his methods than any other source. Some of the arguments seem forced, but in general this is an indispensable work for an appreciation of what Piero really accomplished.

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca. Translated by Martin Ryle and Kate Soper. New ed. London: Verso, 2000. In-depth historical investigation of the culture and events surrounding Piero’s work, explicates the political intrigues captured in his paintings and the effects of Piero’s patrons on his art. Includes eighty pages of photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Hartt, Frederick. History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 5th ed. New York: H. N. Abrams, 2003. Hartt gives an excellent account of Piero’s position in the development of Italian Renaissance art; in short space, he sketches the essential qualities of his work, focusing on formal and thematic integrity. His writing is eminently readable, making this the best available introduction.

Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. Piero della Francesca. New York: Phaidon, 2002. Comprehensive survey of Piero’s work, including the newly restored Arezzo frescoes. Discusses the intersections of religion and politics in Piero’s art. Includes illustrations, map, bibliographic references, and index.

Longhi, Roberto. Piero della Francesca. 3d ed. Translated by David Tabbat. Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002. A new translation of one of the first revisionist studies of Piero’s formal qualities and of his role in the evolution of Italian painting. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Translated by Gaston du C. de Vere. Reprint. New York: Abrams, 1979. In this edition of a famous volume of biographical sketches by a near-contemporary of Piero, Vasari includes many details that would otherwise have been unrecorded; he is thus the source of most of what is known, though much is based on hearsay. Vasari also shows what was thought of Piero during the sixteenth century.

Wood, Jeryldene M., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Collection of essays covering such topics as Piero’s mathematical treatises, the spiritual aspects of his paintings, his portraits of rulers, and his use of perspective to represent the ideal city. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.