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Piero della Francesca
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Piero [Pietro di Benedetto di Pietro] della Francesca [de’ Franceschi]
(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.
I. Life and painted work.
1. Early works.
(i) Background and collaborative works.
Piero’s birthplace, Borgo San Sepolcro, was at one of the crossroads between Tuscany, the Marches and Umbria. A flourishing town in the upper Tiber Valley, it passed from Malatesta rule to the Papacy in 1431 and was ceded to Florence in 1441. Piero was the son of a tanner and wool merchant, and his early study of mathematics doubtless had a mercantile purpose (see §III below). Documents (Dabell, 1984; Banker, 1990, 1991, 1993) provide clues about Piero’s earliest artistic activity. He was paid in Borgo San Sepolcro in June 1431 for painting processional candle poles, and he is recorded there on 29 December 1432 as having assisted Antonio da Anghiari, a local Late Gothic painter, with initial work on the high altarpiece of S Francesco since June 1432. The commission was later abandoned and passed on to Sassetta, whose celebrated altarpiece, completed in 1444, was an important influence on Piero. This early payment (a substantial 56 florins) and others for painting pennants with the insignia of Pope Eugenius IV (reg 1431–47) in 1436 were made through his father (recorded elsewhere in dealings with Antonio), indicating Piero’s youth but also his precocious involvement in local artistic commissions. He is recorded several times in Borgo San Sepolcro until 1438. Florence must have provided a fundamental stimulus for Piero’s development, although there is
only one record of his presence there. On 12 September 1439 he is documented with Domenico Veneziano in a payment relating to the decoration (destr.) of S Egidio (now S Maria Nuova), then the most important Florentine fresco cycle since the Brancacci Chapel (Florence, S Maria del Carmine). Piero was inspired by Domenico’s ordered, rationally lit compositions (especially his St Lucy altarpiece of the 1440s), as well as by his calm, pale Madonnas, whose ovoid heads and almond eyes reappear in Piero’s figures. It is intriguing to imagine the appearance of the work (untraced) that Domenico is documented as having produced in 1450 in Arezzo, where the two painters may have met again.
(ii) The ‘Misericordia’ altarpiece.
In 1442 Piero’s name was drawn from a list of citizens eligible for membership of the town council of Borgo San Sepolcro (not necessarily indicating his actual presence there), the first of many references to his participation in civic affairs. He received a significant commission in the town a year after Sassetta’s altarpiece was set up there. On 11 June 1445 a leading charitable confraternity contracted him to paint a large altarpiece for its church/oratory. The Misericordia altarpiece (Sansepolcro, Pin.) was probably the first major work in the town by a non-Sienese artist. The commission had been in preparation since 1430 (Dabell, 1984), and Piero’s contract specified that the work was to be completed within three years. As with many of Piero’s works, however, there were years of delay, and he interrupted the execution of this polyptych more than once; in early 1455 he was admonished by the patrons. The work was not finished until about 1460. Although the panels of the Misericordia altarpiece are poorly preserved, they reveal the early development of Piero’s style from the loose modelling reminiscent of Masaccio, seen in SS Sebastian and John the Baptist on the left, to the monumental, subtly defined SS John the Evangelist and Bernardino on the right, all of them standing solidly in space, despite the gold background required for this conservative commission. The central figure of the Virgin epitomizes Piero’s concern for statuesque, scrupulously modelled form and is a perfect conjunction of iconography and volumetric description. The supplicants gathered around her typify Piero’s nonindividualizing approach to figures, here depicted with a restrained but telling use of gesture.
(iii) The ‘Baptism’.
The Baptism (London, N.G.) is also an early work, probably begun in the late 1440s; it was the centre of an altarpiece (Sansepolcro Cathedral) that appears archaic when viewed according to Piero’s luminous idiom. The morning light, open sky and distinctive clouds in the Baptism are all characteristic of Piero, while the trees in the landscape background punctuate space like bars of music and provide the same compositional scansion as they do in many of his later works. His interest in light is prominently displayed in the reflective surface of the river. The arrangement of the foreground figures and their deliberate juxtaposition with inanimate, regular Piero della Francesca: Baptism, bodies (e.g. the cylinder of the tree) are early indications of Piero’s egg tempera on panel, 1.67×1.16 m,… enduring interest in rigorously constructed compositions. Here and elsewhere, however, narrative expression always takes precedence over perspectival construction. The remaining part of the altarpiece was entrusted in the mid-1450s to the Sienese workshop of Matteo di Giovanni (also a native of Borgo San Sepolcro) and Giovanni di Pietro, who painted the lateral panels with figures of SS Peter and Paul , pilaster saints and a narrative predella relating to the Baptist, one end of which bears the arms of the Graziani family (all Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.). A roundel with God the Father (untraced) above the central scene may have been painted by Piero. The altarpiece appears to have been constructed by Antonio d’Anghiari (Dabell, 1984) and commissioned for a church dedicated to S Giovanni Battista, either in Val d’Afra or the Pieve (Lightbown).
(iv) Work for courtly patrons.
The signed and dated Penitent St Jerome (1450; Berlin, Gemäldegal.), a small painting in its original frame, is a refined work of the kind Piero provided for his first courtly patrons. These were perhaps the Este in Ferrara, where he painted frescoes (destr.) in S Agostino c. 1449 and where
he doubtless saw examples of work by Rogier van der Weyden or other early Netherlandish painters. Despite the loss of its surface glazes, this work demonstrates Piero’s clarity of composition and depiction of cool, morning light. Its poetic, river-crossed landscape, similar to that of the Baptism , precedes that painted by Bono da Ferrara in the Ovetari Chapel (Padua, Eremitani). A slightly later version of the same subject (Venice, Accad.) depicts a donor and a view of a town like Borgo San Sepolcro. Both works have an intensity of feeling entirely befitting the spiritual subject. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was one of Piero’s most important courtly patrons. His transformation of S Francesco in Rimini into the dynastic Tempio Malatestiano involved Alberti (see fig.), who may have proposed Piero’s services for the votive fresco of Sigismondo Malatesta Venerating St Sigismund (1451; detached, in situ). The careful profile of Sigismondo, repeated in a portrait by Piero (Paris, Louvre), contrasts with the relaxed pose of the saint and with the contrapuntal figures of the two greyhounds, in which courtly and symbolic iconography and natural description are merged. The saint’s hand and orb reveal the painter’s skill in depicting both regular and irregular solids. As in the Baptism and all of Piero’s most successful compositions, there is a visually satisfying sense of interval between the figures here, a remarkable and idiosyncratic feeling for the rhythmical arrangement of solids and voids.
(v) The Perugia altarpiece.
The altarpiece painted for the Franciscan nuns of S Antonio delle Monache, Perugia (Perugia, G.N. Umbria), has been associated with documents of 1469 (Lightbown) but appears to be an earlier work, datable to before the Arezzo frescoes and showing the strong influence of Domenico Veneziano (e.g. his Virgin and Child ; Bucharest, N. Mus. A.). The setting and frame of the main register, the Virgin and Child between SS Anthony of Padua, John the Baptist, Francis and Elizabeth of Hungary , are redolent of the courtly Late Gothic world of Central Italy, while its more modern double predella and unusual gable with the Annunciation , certainly planned from the start, display Piero’s freedom when faced by less restricted sections of a painting. The virtuosity of the architectural description recalls the Urbino Flagellation and the Solomon and Sheba scene in Arezzo, both roughly contemporary.
2. Mature works.
(i) Frescoes for S Francesco, Arezzo.
Piero’s greatest achievement is the fresco cycle of the Legend of the True Cross (Arezzo, S Francesco; see fig.) illustrating Man’s redemption through the story of the wood from the Garden of Eden that became Christ’s Cross. These narrative scenes contain some of the most original and memorable images of the Renaissance, and Piero della Francesca: Battle of their arrangement, which diverges from the traditional chronology of Heraclius and Chosroes (1453– the Golden Legend , is adapted to Franciscan liturgy. The 4), fresco,… sophistication of these paintings is the result of the learned Franciscan programme and the lucid inspiration of Piero. In the initial phase of decoration, the chapel vault and the Last Judgement over the arch facing the nave were painted by the workshop of Bicci di Lorenzo c. 1447. Piero may have begun work very soon thereafter. The commission was the result of a bequest by the Bacci family (the involvement of the humanist Giovanni Bacci, postulated by Ginzburg, is entirely hypothetical). The fresco cycle is undocumented and can be dated only to after 1447, when a partial payment was made by the Bacci to an unnamed painter (usually identified as Bicci); most of the chapel was painted during the early to mid-1450s, and it was certainly finished by 1465. The frescoes may be dated stylistically to a period beginning in the late 1440s (by comparison with the early parts of Piero’s own Misericordia altarpiece) and are reflected in works by other artists painted by the late 1450s (Bellosi, Bertelli). One comparable work is by Giovanni da Piamonte, an assistant of Piero whose hand is recognizable in parts of the frescoes. His Virgin and Child with Saints (Città di Castello, S Maria dei Servi) is signed and dated 1456, which proves that this littleknown painter was an independent master by then. Another work that reflects knowledge of the
lowest tier of frescoes in Arezzo is the St Nicholas predella by Giovanni di Francesco (Florence, Casa Buonarroti), who died in 1459, so adding to the chronological framework. In sizeable sections of the frescoes Piero’s design is more evident than his execution; qualitative unevenness reveals that important passages were delegated to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant. The Raising of the Jew from the Well , for example, was designed by Piero and painted by an assistant (probably Giovanni da Piamonte), but with the correct light-source—such a significant part of Piero’s cerebral approach to art—reversed. Although Vasari’s account of the frescoes in the Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568) is somewhat confused and historically inaccurate, his description is often detailed and perceptive. He noted (Vite, 1568; Eng. trans. by G. de Vere, London, 1912–14, iii, p. 20): "a row of Corinthian columns, divinely well proportioned [in the Solomon and Sheba scene]; and a peasant who, leaning with his hands on his spade, stands listening [in the Discovery of the Cross scene]…. But above every other consideration…is his painting of Night, with an angel in foreshortening who is flying with his head downwards…and with his own light…illuminates the pavilion, the men-at-arms, and all the surroundings [the Dream of Constantine ]…. Piero gives us to know in this darkness how important it is to copy things as they are." Three essential aspects of Piero’s art are touched on here: his interest in perspective, his unaffected naturalism and his skill with light.
(ii) The ‘Flagellation’.
The signed Flagellation (Urbino, Pal. Ducale) is in a sense a summation of Piero’s artistic interests: a rigorous construction based on modular measurements, a conception of composition and istoria worthy of Alberti and the use of Classical figures and architecture, all depicted with his precise and extraordinary command of light. The figure of the man in Turkish dress, whose turban is described with the aid of minuscule pouncing and whose Classical drapery is lit by separate sources of light (the underside of his left hand catches the natural light in a manner reminiscent of Jan van Eyck), represents the summit of Piero’s art. From the 18th century, when the Flagellation was recorded in the sacristy of Urbino Cathedral, descriptions of this enigmatic panel have focused on the identity of the three figures on the right. These were once thought to portray members of the Montefeltro family or to allude to the assassination in 1444 of Oddantonio da Montefeltro by his half-brother Federigo da Montefeltro, later Duke of Urbino and an important patron of Piero. Uncertainty about the date of this picture (probably mid-1450s) and its destination has led to many interpretations. Analyses of its function and meaning have ranged from themes related to the Crusades, in which Christ’s Passion was echoed in contemporary events (Clark, Ginzburg), often with specific identifications of the secular figures with princes or patrons (Lavin, Lightbown, Calvesi), to antiSemitic themes (Lollini). An original interpretation of the scene as the flagellation of St Jerome (Pope-Hennessy, Apollo , 1986), in which much iconographical inconsistency is resolved, sets the painting in the context of a highly cultured court.
(iii) The ‘Resurrection’.
One of Piero’s most celebrated paintings, the Resurrection (after 1458; Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.), is undocumented but is related stylistically to the later Arezzo frescoes. It was frescoed in the Residenza, one of the official chambers of government in Borgo San Sepolcro, in the Sala dei Conservatori, a room completed in 1458. It was clearly modelled on the image of the Resurrection seen in the 14th-century Sienese altarpiece still in the cathedral there. The fresco was probably moved soon after its execution when the room was altered, and it suffered some damage, including the loss of framing elements and parts of the inscription. The commanding figure of the Risen Christ is one of the enduring images of Christian victory in Western art, and the disarray of the slumbering Roman soldiers provides a stirring contrast. As at Arezzo, the setting of the figures close to the foreground lends a dramatic immediacy to the scene.
(iv) Work for S Agostino, Borgo San Sepolcro and the ‘Madonna del
parto’.
On 4 October 1454 Piero had been commissioned by the Augustinian friars of Borgo San Sepolcro and the family of Angelo di Giovanni di Simone and his late brother, Simone di Giovanni di Simone, to paint the high altarpiece of S Agostino. The unusual time limit of eight years suggests that Piero was involved elsewhere at the time. The principal surviving panels of this altarpiece (dispersed), each about 1.33×0.59 m, are linked by a Classical parapet running behind the figures. These include a solemn depiction of St Augustine (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.), who bears a crystal crozier and whose cope is decorated with freely handled New Testament scenes; a quietly heroic and dazzlingly bejewelled St Michael (London, N.G.), in which part of the throne base and drapery are visible; St John the Evangelist (New York, Frick), with a corresponding element of the throne at his feet; and a corpulent portrait-like image of St Nicholas of Tolentino (Milan, Mus. Poldi Pezzoli). Smaller panels executed by Piero’s workshop and possibly associated with the altarpiece include St Apollonia (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) and two Augustinian saints and a damaged Crucifixion (all three New York, Frick). The Crucifixion contains beautifully depicted horses, which are as monumental as their counterparts in Arezzo and may well be by Piero. Like the Raising of the Jew from the Well scene of the Arezzo frescoes, St Apollonia seems to have been painted by an assistant, as it is lit from the ‘wrong’ side. Archival research has revealed more information about the patrons involved in this altarpiece commission (Banker, 1987) and evidence of the untraced central panel, a Virgin and Child (Polcri, 1990). The work was not completed until at least 1469, and once again stylistic contrasts within its evolution are apparent, from the St John , contemporary with the Arezzo frescoes, to the luminosity of the St Augustine inspired by the Urbino Flagellation . A figure of a youthful saint, usually identified as St Julian (Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.), which Piero had frescoed earlier in S Agostino, was discovered in 1954. Only the upper part of the body survives, but this fragment beautifully illustrates his skilful use of lighting and the technique of pouncing. These qualities are also evident in a calm image of incomparable devotional strength, the ‘Madonna del parto’ (Virgin with Two Angels), which adorns a small reconstructed cemetery chapel (formerly S Maria a Momentana) near Monterchi. The angels revealing the pregnant Virgin were painted from the same cartoon reversed, a device also used in the contemporary Arezzo frescoes, which provides a powerful symmetry. A more monumental female figure, also undocumented and perhaps painted somewhat later, is the frescoed St Mary Magdalene (Arezzo Cathedral), which is partly cropped.
3. Late works.
Piero is recorded in Urbino only once, as the guest of Giovanni Santi on 8 April 1469, when he came to discuss a projected altarpiece for the confraternity of the Corpus Domini, a commission that had passed to Justus of Ghent by 1473. He must have been in frequent contact with the court of Federigo da Montefeltro, however, which provided him with at least two other commissions. The first of these was probably the candid double portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife Battista Sforza (both Florence, Uffizi), no doubt painted after Battista’s premature death in 1472 and partly a celebration of the ruling couple’s virtues. These are extolled in the elegant humanist Piero della Francesca: Virgin texts on the reverse of each of the bust-length portraits, which have and Child (Brera Altarpiece), mid-1470s (Milan,… in the background one of the most beautiful, airy landscape views of the 15th century. The Brera Altarpiece (Virgin and Child ; Milan, Brera), possibly a work of the mid1470s, was in some ways modelled on a Late Gothic altarpiece (1439; Urbino, Pal. Ducale) commissioned from Antonio Alberti by the father of Federigo, Guidantonio da Montefeltro (reg 1404–43). Both works have a funerary function (Lightbown), and it seems clear that Piero’s altarpiece is a votive work, relating Federigo to his heavenly intercessors. Its beauty derives from the extraordinary union of Renaissance architecture (reflecting the style current in Urbino) and figures in an idealized, ecclesiastical setting. The suspended egg, which has elicited much exaggerated exegesis, is sometimes found in funerary chapels; it provides both a symbol of the Resurrection and a formal parallel to the ovoid head of the Virgin. Among Piero’s last works are the poetic Nativity (London, N.G.), abraded by old, over zealous cleaning but also damaged by a candle-burn, which suggests that it did once stand as a completed altarpiece, and the Senigallia Madonna (Urbino, Pal. Ducale; ex-Senigallia), an intimate depiction of the Virgin and Child between two silvery-blue and pink angels with a view into a background
room. The extraordinary effect of reflected light from the shuttered window there is a distant prelude to Dutch 17th-century painting.
II. Style, working methods and technique.
Since the execution of many of Piero’s paintings was spread over many years, and since his figure types and mode of composition changed little during his long career, it is challenging to provide an accurate chronology of his works. Close scrutiny of certain characteristics, however, provides evidence for some of the change in his style. In physiognomy, there was a gradual shift from rosier to paler flesh tints and a move from fuller, rounder faces with large, expressive eyes and fleshier lips towards smaller eyes and less deeply modelled features. In Piero’s approach to colour, there was a move from saturated tonalities, laid on in broad brushstrokes, to more luminous ones, handled in the latest works with a miniaturist’s fine technique. Some of this shift in use of colour occurred early and may have been the result of a similar development in the work of Domenico Veneziano. The extremes of Piero’s figure style may be perceived by comparing the left-hand saints in the Misericordia altarpiece or the frescoed St Julian in Sansepolcro with the figures in the Brera altarpiece or the Senigallia Madonna . The late change in handling was perhaps the result of failing eyesight, alluded to by Vasari, but which probably occurred very gradually, as the clear handwriting of Piero’s will of 1487 suggests. It is evident that Piero began experimenting with fresco technique early on. His association in Florence in 1439 with Domenico Veneziano, who was using an oil-based medium for at least part of the frescoes in S Egidio, already suggests a move away from traditional buon fresco technique. This may not be as unusual as it has seemed, however. An oil technique in wall painting is mentioned in Cennino Cennini’s Il libro dell’arte , a handbook used by many 15th-century central Italian painters, and analysis of the Arezzo frescoes proves that Piero’s approach to painting there was complex and varied. Piero’s frequent use of pricked cartoons, even for the smallest parts of a composition, is at the heart of his attempt to achieve pictorial perfection. Evidence of their use is visible in both panels and frescoes, for example in the Baptism , the Flagellation and throughout the frescoes in Rimini, Arezzo and Monterchi. In these last two works, symmetry of pose is achieved by the reversing of the cartoon, a method that could also be used to repeat a design and thus save time. This general use of pouncing indicates that Piero was a key figure in the changing application of this technique in the Renaissance, from earlier frescoes, when it was usually used for repeated decorative motifs, to the full-scale cartoons used by Raphael and others. Far from implying a loss of artistic spontaneity, this method could convey the most sophisticated, artfully achieved designs from the workshop to the wall without a loss in quality such as one might risk by using a sinopia , in which the underdrawing is covered with plaster. Within several passages of the Arezzo frescoes (the marquetry door of the Annunciation , for instance) changes of medium are apparent, as if the painter experimented on the spot. Some patches of wall bear marks left by the application of a damp cloth to keep the plaster damp, while many other passages show evidence of retouching a secco , necessary with certain metal pigments, to refine effects of light and shade. Some of the pigmented forms painted after the plaster had dried were later lost, such as leaves on the large tree in the Adamites in the Arezzo frescoes or the left-hand tree in the Resurrection in Sansepolcro (leading writers to misinterpret them as symbolic, withered trees). For bibliography see §IV below.
Frank Dabell
III. Theoretical works.
Throughout the 15th century in Tuscany there was an increasing use of more sophisticated mathematical techniques in many crafts. An examination of artists’ practice in this period, however, strongly suggests that Leon Battista Alberti was over-stating his case when he implied, in De
pictura (1435), that painting generally involved a considerable quantity of exact mathematics. Only one leading artist of the 15th century seems to have had an independent reputation as a mathematician: Piero della Francesca. The identification of manuscripts of mathematical works by Piero and their publication confirm Vasari’s characterization of him as an able mathematician, much of whose work was incorporated into treatises published after his death by his countryman, and possibly pupil, Luca Pacioli. Vasari’s charges that Pacioli was guilty of plagiarism, which thus lowered Piero’s later reputation, must be viewed with caution. Notions of copyright took root only slowly with the advent of printing: even in the 1520s, what should now be regarded as a piece of intellectual property, namely a method of solving cubic equations, seems to have been considered to be heritable. Most 15th-century mathematical treatises, including two of Piero’s, contained numerous problems taken from earlier treatises. Mathematics, particularly algebra, developed very rapidly in the period immediately after Piero’s death, a fact that no doubt contributed to the rapid decline of his reputation as a mathematician; the fortune of Piero’s mathematics was not unlike that of his art. Vasari said that Piero wrote ‘many’ mathematical treatises. Three have been identified: De prospectiva pingendi (‘On perspective for painting’), Trattato d’abaco (‘Abacus treatise’) and De quinque corporibus regularibus (‘On the five regular bodies’, i.e. the five regular solids described in Euclid’s Elements ). The treatise on perspective and the abacus book are both in Italian. The work on the regular solids survives in Latin, but may have been written originally in Italian. The dates of composition are not known exactly, but it is clear, from Piero’s own borrowings and references, that the abacus book (probably written in the 1450s) preceded the work on the regular solids and that the latter was completed after the perspective treatise, probably in the decade after 1482. Partly on account of Pacioli’s ‘plagiarism’ the contents of all three treatises have rather complicated publishing histories. Complete editions have appeared only in modern times. The treatise least used by Pacioli is the one of most obvious concern to the historian of art, namely De prospectiva pingendi . A manuscript with exquisitely neat diagrams, believed by Nicco Fasola to be autograph, is preserved in Parma (Bib. Palatina, MS. 1576). Several later manuscripts are known (some in Latin), confirming other evidence that the work circulated quite widely in the 16th century. Parts of it were incorporated, with acknowledgement, in Daniele Barbaro’s La Prattica della perspettiva (Venice, 1569). De prospectiva pingendi is intended as a practical instruction manual. The reader is presumably regarded as an apprentice, since he is called ‘tu’ throughout and is generally addressed in the imperative while being given detailed instructions for drawing the diagrams. Proofs mainly take the form of merely checking that the result is what Piero asserted. They are usually very brief, much briefer than the drawing instructions. Some proofs are only approximate, suggesting that the successful drawing of the diagram was seen as proof enough. However, a few proofs are fairly elaborate, involving long series of similar triangles and manipulation of ratios. While these techniques are standard for the time, they are not entirely elementary. The apprentice would need to have attended an abacus school to be able to follow such proofs with the fluency Piero seems to expect. (It is probably on account of the level of mathematical skill expected in the reader that De prospectiva pingendi did not find its way into print in the Renaissance.) In the manner of all practical treatises of the time, Piero’s work proceeds almost entirely by means of worked examples. Its first book deals with flat patterns (tiled floors and the plans of simple bodies), the second considers various simple solid figures (such as houses, idealized as cuboids), and the third handles more elaborate objects, such as column capitals and human heads. Several diagrams correspond closely with elements found in the fresco cycle the Legend of the True Cross (Arezzo, S Francesco) and presumably reflect Piero’s preliminary drawings. Piero’s treatise on perspective seems to have been the first of its kind, and it set the pattern for later treatises, although Piero no doubt saw it as part of an established tradition of workshop manuals. The Trattato d’abaco belongs in another tradition of practical texts, that of the elementary mathematical treatises used in abacus schools. These treatises—which derive their name from the Liber abaci (1202) of Leonardo of Pisa (c. 1170–?1250)—are largely concerned with arithmetic, but usually also contain a little algebra and may sometimes include a few geometrical problems. The exposition is by series of worked examples. Piero’s Trattato is written in this way, though the introduction makes it clear that the work was not written for use in a school, but at the request of a friend or patron. It was probably a manual for merchants and was dedicated to a member of a local family, the Pichi (related to Piero’s own family). There are two known manuscripts of the work; the one Arrighi believes to be autograph is in Florence (Bib. Medicea–Laurenziana, MS. Ashb. 280/359–291). Most of Piero’s arithmetical and algebraic problems can be found in earlier treatises, but his geometrical problems, of which there is an unusually large number, show
considerable originality, notably in dealing with three-dimensional figures. In particular, Piero gives descriptions of four of the polyhedra whose discovery Pappus of Alexandria (5th century AD) ascribes to Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC). Pappus’ account merely lists the number of faces of each type. Piero shows what the solids actually look like, by describing how the faces are distributed round each corner of the solid. He is thus to be credited with having rediscovered the solids. Many of the problems in Piero’s Trattato were printed, verbatim or with very minor changes, in Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica (Venice, 1494). Piero’s treatise De quinque corporibus regularibus is dedicated to Guidobaldo I, Duke of Urbino. This dedication must date from after Guidobaldo’s accession to the title, in 1482, so it is probable that the treatise was at least finished in the last decade of Piero’s life. The single surviving manuscript is in Rome (Vatican, Bib. Apostolica, Cod. Urb. 273). The text is in Latin, but the work nonetheless has much in common with the vernacular Trattato d’abaco , including many repeated problems (usually treated in a more detailed manner in the later work). The later treatise is original in being concerned only with geometry, however. Its first part deals with problems of plane figures, the second considers the five regular polyhedra individually, the third solves the problems involved in inscribing one regular polyhedron inside another (with numerous references to Elements , XV, a book formerly considered to be by Euclid). The fourth part of Piero’s work deals with bodies that Piero calls ‘irregular’, though most of them (such as his Archimedean polyhedra, already discussed in the Trattato ) can be inscribed in a sphere, and almost all show considerable symmetry. Several of Piero’s geometrical problems are original in requiring the construction of a sphere with volume equal to that of a given solid. Piero’s treatise on the regular solids was printed, complete but in Italian translation, as the third part of Pacioli’s De divina proportione (Venice, 1509). Piero was undoubtedly a very able mathematician. His mathematical works are not only unusually orderly in their presentation but also show an unusual degree of originality (for their time) both in the extent to which they deal with geometrical problems and in the choice of the problems themselves. It is, however, difficult to establish any simple connection between Piero’s mathematics and his paintings. His use of perspective seems to be broadly similar to that of most of his contemporaries, although he is exceptional in his adeptness at balancing composition in space with composition in the plane, and the famous ‘stillness’ of his works may be due to his having made exact perspective calculations for an unusually large number of elements (thus, for example, making all heads appear exactly equal). Piero’s strong sense of order and of symmetry certainly should be seen as links between his mathematics and his art, although they by no means provide complete characterizations of either.
Writings
G. Mancini, ed.: Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus (Rome, 1916); also in G. Mancini: ‘L’opera “De corporibus regularibus” di Pietro Franceschi detto della Francesca usurpata da Fra Luca Pacioli’, Mem. Accad. Lincei, 15th ser., xiv, pp. 441–580 G. Nicco Fasola, ed.: De prospectiva pingendi (Florence, 1942/ R Florence, 1984) G. Arrighi, ed.: Trattato d’abaco (Pisa, 1970)
Bibliography
S. A. Jaywardene: ‘The “Trattato d’abaco” of Piero della Francesca’, Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance , ed. C. H. Clough (Manchester, 1976) M. D. Davis: Piero della Francesca’s Mathematical Treatises: The ‘Trattato d’abaco’ and ‘Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus’ (Ravenna, 1977) O. Calabrese, ed.: Piero teorico d’arte (Rome, 1985) R. Franci and L. Toti Rigatelli: ‘Towards a History of Algebra from Leonardo of Pisa to Luca Pacioli’, Janus , lxxii (1985), pp. 17–82
J.V. Field
IV. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.
Piero is first mentioned during his own lifetime, but only in passing, by Filarete in his Trattato and by Giovanni Santi in his life of Federigo da Montefeltro . Luca Pacioli, who called him a ‘monarch’ of painting and was mainly concerned with his theoretical works, was the first to state that Piero worked in Bologna, Ferrara (specified later by Vasari as decoration in the Palazzo Ducale and a chapel in S Agostino), Rimini and Urbino. Although several of the works mentioned are untraced, there is no reason to doubt the accounts of Pacioli or Vasari. Vasari, who also stressed Piero’s skill as mathematician, referred to his work in Pesaro (the Flagellation , according to Lightbown), Ancona (a Marriage of the Virgin in S Ciriaco) and Loreto (in the sacristy, S Casa, with Domenico Veneziano). Piero’s reputation as painter declined after the 16th century, and it was only in local studies of the early 19th century, such as F. Gherardi Dragomanni’s edition (1835) of Vasari’s 1550 biography, that his oeuvre began to be examined critically. J. Crowe and G. Cavalcaselle, in the New History of Painting in Italy (London, 1864), and soon after them Bernard Berenson in the Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance (London, 1897), led the way to a modern reappraisal. In the 20th century early local studies of Piero and his impact around Arezzo by Salmi and others (summarized in 1979) were followed by landmark publications by Roberto Longhi (reassembled in 1963), whose fundamental and poetic appreciation of Piero in the context of his contemporaries set the stage for his reception in Italy. Berenson, who employed a connoisseur’s approach to Piero in 1897, later wrote an essay, Piero della Francesca or the Ineloquent in Art (London, 1954), in which Piero’s classical restraint is equated with essential form. In the Anglo-Saxon world, Piero’s name became more familiar after the Baptism was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1861, and the Resurrection was acclaimed by John Addington Symonds as ‘by far the grandest, most poetic and most awe-inspiring picture of the Resurrection’ (Renaissance in Italy , 1875–86). Aldous Huxley declared in an essay of 1925 that the Resurrection was ‘the best picture’, and Piero was championed in 1951 by Kenneth Clark, who endorsed Huxley’s view in the television series Civilisation (1969). An extensive text by Battisti (1971) contains a large but unevenly transcribed body of documents assembled by Settesoldi. In the fifth centenary of Piero’s death a number of penetrating but idiosyncratic monographs were issued, and archival discoveries were matched by the publication of important technical data.
Bibliography
Early sources
Filarete [Antonio Averlino]: Trattato del architettura (MS.; early 1460s); ed. J. R. Spencer (New Haven, 1965), ii G. Santi: La vita e le gesta di Federico di Montefeltro, Duca d’Urbino (MS.; c. 1482); ed. L. Michelini Tocci (Vatican City, 1985), ii, pp. 673–4 L. Pacioli: Summa de arithmetica (Venice, 1494), fols 2 r , 68 v L. Pacioli: De divina proportione … (Venice, 1509), fols 23 r , 33 r G. Vasari: Le vite di più eccelenti [sic] architetti, pittori, et scultori (Florence, 1550); ed. L. Bellosi and A. Rossi (Turin, 1986), pp. 337–43 G. Vasari: Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85 ), ii, pp. 487–501
General
J. Crowe and G. Cavalcaselle: New History of Painting in Italy (London, 1864) E. Borsook: The Mural Painters of Tuscany from Cimabue to Andrea del Castagno (London, 1960, rev. Oxford, 2/1980) B. Berenson: Central and North Italian Schools (1968)
M. Aronberg Lavin: The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago, 1990), pp. 167–94 J. R. Banker : The Culture of San Sepolcro during the Youth of Piero della Francesca (Ann Arbor, MI, 2003)
Monographs
K. Clark: Piero della Francesca (London, 1951, rev. 2/1969) B. Berenson: Piero della Francesca or the Ineloquent in Art (London, 1954) R. Longhi: Piero della Francesca (1963), iii of Opere complete di Roberto Longhi (Florence, 1963)
G. Gilbert: Change in Piero della Francesca (Locust Valley, 1968) P. Hendy: Piero della Francesca and the Early Renaissance (London, 1968) P. de Vecchi: The Complete Paintings of Piero della Francesca (London, 1970/ R Harmondsworth, 1985)
E. Battisti: Piero della Francesca , 2 vols (Milan, 1971, rev. 2/1992) M. Salmi: La pittura di Piero della Francesca (Novara, 1979) B. Cole: Piero della Francesca: Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Art (New York, 1991) J. Pope-Hennessy: The Piero della Francesca Trail (London, 1991) M. Aronberg Lavin: Piero della Francesca (London and New York, 1992) C. Bertelli: Piero della Francesca (London and New Haven, 1992) R. Lightbown: Piero della Francesca (New York, London and Paris, 1992) M. Calvesi : Piero della Francesca (Turin, 1998) C. Prete, ed.: Piero interpretato: Copie, giudizi e musealizzazione di Piero della Francesca (Ancona, 1998)
J. M. Wood, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca (Cambridge, 2002) J. V. Field : Piero della Francesca: A Mathematician’s Art (New Haven, 2005) B. Roeck : Mörder, Maler und Mäzene: Piero della Francesca ‘Geisselung’: eine kunsthistorische Kriminalgeschichte (Munich, 2006)
Exhibition catalogues and symposia
Federico di Montefeltro, lo stato, le arti, la cultura: Atti del convegno di studi organizzato dallo centro studi sulle società dell’antico regime: Urbino, 1982 Piero della Francesca e il novecento (exh. cat., Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ., 1991) Monarco della pintura: Piero and his Legacy: Washington, DC, 1992 La ‘Madonna del parto’ in restauro (exh. cat., ed. G. Centauro; Monterchi, Scu. Via Reglia, 1992)
Nel raggio di Piero (exh. cat., ed. L. Berti; Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ., 1992) Piero e Urbino, Piero e le corti rinascimentali (exh. cat., ed. P. dal Poggetto; Urbino, Pal. Ducale, 1992)
Una scuola per Piero: Luce, colore e prospettiva nella formazione fiorentina di Piero della Francesca (exh. cat., ed. L. Bellosi; Florence, Uffizi, 1992–3 ) Il polittico agostiniano di Piero della Francesca (exh. cat., ed. A. di Lorenzo; Milan, Mus. Poldi-Pezzoli,
1996) I Della Rovere: Piero della Francesca, Raffaello, Tiziano (exh. cat., ed. P. Dal Poggetto; Senigallia, Palazzo del Duca; Urbino, Pal. Ducale; Pesaro, Pal. Ducale; Urbania, Museo Civico, 2004) Piero della Francesca e le corti italiane (exh. cat., eds C. Bertelli and A. Paolucci; Arezzo, Gal & Mus. Med. & Mod., 2007)
Specialist studies
Specific paintings
M. Aronberg Lavin: Piero della Francesca: The ‘Flagellation’ (Chicago and London, 1972, rev. Chicago, 2/1990) M. Aronberg Lavin: Piero della Francesca’s ‘Baptism of Christ’ (New Haven, 1981) P. Scapecchi: ‘Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Piero della Francesca e gli affreschi di Arezzo’, Prospettiva [Florence], 32 (1983), pp. 71–6 M. Aronberg Lavin and M. Laclotte: Piero della Francesca a Rimini: L’affresco nel Tempio Malatestiano (Bologna, 1984) C. Ginzburg: The Enigma of Piero: The ‘Baptism’, the Arezzo Cycle, the ‘Flagellation’ (London, 1985); review by P. Black in Oxford A. J. , ix/2 (1986) J. Pope-Hennessy: ‘Whose Flagellation ?’, Apollo , cxxiv (1986), pp. 162–5 J. R. Banker: ‘Piero della Francesca’s S Agostino Altarpiece: Some New Documents’, Burl. Mag. , cxxix (1987), pp. 642–51 L. Bellosi: ‘Giovanni di Piamonte e gli affreschi di Piero ad Arezzo’, Prospettiva [Florence], 50 (1987), pp. 15–35 J. Guillaud and M. Guillaud: Piero della Francesca, Poet of Form: The Frescoes of San Francesco in Arezzo (Paris and New York, 1988) M. G. Paolini, ed.: Ricerche su Piero (Siena, 1989) [essays on the Resurrection , St Louis of Toulouse and Perugia] Progetto per Piero della Francesca: Indagini diagnostico-conoscitive per la conservazione della ‘Leggenda della Vera Croce’ e della ‘Madonna del parto’ (Florence, 1989) G. Centauro: Dipinti murali di Piero della Francesca. La basilica di S Francesco ad Arezzo: Indagini su sette secoli (Milan, 1990) F. Lollini: ‘Ancora la Flagellazione: Addenda di bibliografia (e di metodo)’, Boll. A. , 67 (1991), pp. 149–50
F. Lollini: ‘Una possibile connotazione antiebraica della Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca’, Boll. A. , 65 (1991), pp. 1–28 E. F. Londei: ‘La scena della Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: La sua identificazione con un luogo di Urbino del quattrocento’, Boll. A. , 65 (1991), pp. 29–66 A. S. Tessari: ‘La Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: Ovvero l’instaurazione del Regno di Cristo’, A. Crist. , 745 (1991), pp. 277–86 M. Calvesi: ‘La Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: Identikit di un enigma’, A. & Dossier , 70 (1992), pp. 22–7 Piero della Francesca: Il polittico di Sant’ Antonio (exh. cat., ed. V. Garibaldi; Perugia, Rocca Paolina, 1993) M. A. Lavin: Piero della Francesca: San Francesco, Arezzo (New York, 1994) S. Nessi: ‘Il Sant’Antonio di Padova di Piero della Francesca nel polittico di Perugia’, Santo, xxxiv/1 (Jan– April 1994), pp. 95–8
J. R. Banker: ‘The Altarpiece of the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Borgo Sansepolcro’, Piero della Francesca and his Legacy (Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 21–35 B. Diemling: ‘ The Meeting of the Queen of Sheba with Solomon : Crusade Propaganda in the Fresco Cycle of Piero della Francesca in Arezzo’, Bruckmanns Pantheon , liii (1995), pp. 18–28 M. Michael: Piero della Francesca: The Arezzo Frescoes (London, 1996) D. Arasse: ‘Piero della Francesca: La Legende d’Arezzo: Restoration of Mural Paintings at Basilica di San Francesco, Italy’, L’Oeil , 487 (1997), pp. 44–57 H. Damisch : ‘Piera della Francescas Madonna del Parto: Die Konstruktion einer Kinderheitserinnerung’, Aufklärung anstelle von Andacht: Kulturwissenschaftliche Dimensionen bildender Kunst , ed. K. Herding (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), pp. 120–32 L. Simi : ‘La Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: Un bilancio (provvisorio) e una proposta’, ‘Guardate con i vostri occhi …’: Saggi di storia dell’arte nelle Marche, ed. A. Montironi (Ascoli Piceno, 2002), pp. 111–43 Y. Bonnefoy : ‘La strategia dell’enigma: Piera della Francesca e “La Flagellazione di Cristo”’, La civiltà delle immagini: Pittori e poeti d’Italia, ed. Y. Bonnefoy (Rome, 2005), pp. 15–42 P. Longo : ‘Lo spazio nella “Flagellazione” di Piero della Francesca’, Prospettiva e geometria dello spazio (La Spezia, 2005), pp. 69–81 H. Wenzel : ‘Piero della Francesca: die Madonna mite der Perle’, Möglichkeitsräume: zur Performativität von sensorischer Wahrnehmung , ed. C. Lechtermann (Berlin, 2007), pp. 229–53 A. Dillon Bussi : ‘Il “Dittico degli incontri” e altre opere urbinate di Piero della Francesca’, Paragone, n. s. 3, lix/80 (2008), pp. 20–39
Other
M. Salmi: ‘Perchè “Piero della Francesca”?’, Commentari, 27 (1976), pp. 121–6 J. Beck: ‘Una data per Piero della Francesca’, Prospettiva [Florence], 25 (1978), p. 53 R. Cocke: ‘Piero della Francesca and the Development of Italian Landscape Painting’, Burl. Mag. , cxxii (1980), pp. 627–31 G. Agosti and V. Farinella: ‘Calore del marmo. Pratica e tipologia della deduzioni iconografiche. Un artista: Piero della Francesca, per esempio’, Memoria dell’ antico nell’ arte italiana, ed. S. Settis, i (Turin, 1984), pp. 427–40 F. Dabell: ‘Antonio d’Anghiari e gli inizi di Piero della Francesca’, Paragone, 417 (1984), pp. 71–94
P. Scapecchi: ‘Tu celebras burgi iam cuncta per oppida nomen: Appunti per Piero della Francesca’, A. Crist. (1984), pp. 209–21 J. Triolo: ‘Aggiunte bibliografiche a “Piero della Francesca”, 1970–83 ’, Piero teorico dell’arte , ed. O. Calabrese (Rome, 1985), pp. 287–99 J. Pope-Hennessy: ‘The Mystery of a Master’, New Repub. , 3715 (1986), pp. 38–41 A. Turchini: ‘L’imperatore, il santo e il cavaliere: Note su Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta e Piero della Francesca’, A. Crist. , 714 (1986), pp. 165–80 F. Polcri: ‘A proposito di Piero della Francesca: Nuove fonti archivistiche a Sansepolcro’, Prop. & Ric., 21 (1988), pp. 39–54 J. R. Banker: ‘Un documento inedito del 1432 sull’attività di Piero della Francesca per la chiesa di San Francesco in Borgo S Sepolcro’, Rivista d’arte [prev. pubd as Misc. A.], 4th ser., vi (1990), pp. 245–7
F. Polcri: Due ritrovamenti d’archivio a Sansepolcro: Un inedito sul polittico degli Agostiniani di Piero della Francesca (Sansepolcro, 1990) F. Polcri: ‘Ritrovamenti pierfrancescani nell’archivio giudiziario di Sansepolcro’, Atti Mem. Accad. Petrarca Lett., A. & Sci. , n. s., i (1990), pp. 203–17
F. Dabell: ‘New Documents for the History and Patronage of the Compagnia della SS Trinità in Arezzo’, A. Crist. , 747 (1991), pp. 412–17 D. Franklin: ‘An Unrecorded Commission for Piero della Francesca in Arezzo’, Burl. Mag. , cxxxiii (1991), pp. 193–4 L. B. Kanter: ‘Luca Signorelli, Piero della Francesca, and Pietro Perugino’, Stud. Stor. A. , i (1991), pp. 95–111 J. R. Banker: ‘Piero della Francesca, il fratello Don Francesco di Benedetto e Francesco dal Borgo’, Prospettiva , 68 (1992), pp. 54–6 C. B. Cappel: ‘On “la testa proportionalmente degradata”: Luca Signorelli, Leonardo, and Piero della Francesca’s De prospectiva pingendi ’, Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Papers from a Colloquium held at the Villa Spelman: Florence, 1992 , pp. 17–43 P. G. Pasini: Piero e i Malatesti: L’attività di Piero della Francesca per le corti romagnole (Milan, 1992)
J. R. Banker: ‘Piero della Francesca as Assistant to Antonio d’Anghiari in the 1430s: Some Unpublished Documents’, Burl. Mag. , cxxxv (1993), pp. 16–21 C. E. Gilbert: Piero della Francesca et Giorgione: Problèmes d’interprétation (Paris, 1994) M. Aronberg Lavin, ed.: Piero della Francesca and his Legacy (Washington, DC, 1995) C. Cieri Via and M. Emiliani Dalai, eds: Piero 500 anni (Venice, 1995) M. Kemp: ‘In the Light of Dante: Meditations on Natural and Divine Light in Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Michelangelo’, Ars naturam adiuvans: Festschrift für Matthias Winner, ed. V. V. Flemming and S. Schutze (Mainz, 1996), pp. 160–77 R. Bellucci and C. Frosinini: ‘Esempi di studio dell’ “underdrawing”: Il caso di Piero della Francesca’, Oltre il visibile: Indagini riflettografiche , ed. D. Bertani (Milan, 2001), pp. 145–66 C. Bertelli : ‘Il ritratto nell’opera di Piero della Francesca’, Le metamorfosi del ritratto , ed. R. Zorzi (Florence, 2002), pp. 63–72 M. Aronberg Lavin : ‘Piero della Francesca and Narrative Encapsulation: e.g., the Cock on the Column’, Artibus & Hist., xxv/49 (2004), pp. 9–18 C. Bertelli : ‘Mantegna e Piero della Francesca a Ferrara’, Nel segno di Andrea Mantegna: Arte e cultura a Mantova in età rinascimentale (Modena, 2006), pp. 62–7 C. S. Wood : ‘Piero della Francesca, Liminologist’, Bilder, Räume, Betrachter: Festschrift für Wolfgang Kemp zum 60. Geburtstag , ed. S. Bogen (Berlin, 2006), pp. 252–69 A. Antoniutti : ‘Piero della Francesca a Roma, la committenza di Pio II e del cardinale Guillaume d’Estouteville’, Il ’400 a Roma: La rinascita delle arti da Donatello a Perugino , ed. M. G. Bernardini (Milan, 2008), pp. 161–7
Frank Dabell
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Piero della Francesca
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Piero [Pietro di Benedetto di Pietro] della Francesca [de’ Franceschi]
(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.
I. Life and painted work.
1. Early works.
(i) Background and collaborative works.
Piero’s birthplace, Borgo San Sepolcro, was at one of the crossroads between Tuscany, the Marches and Umbria. A flourishing town in the upper Tiber Valley, it passed from Malatesta rule to the Papacy in 1431 and was ceded to Florence in 1441. Piero was the son of a tanner and wool merchant, and his early study of mathematics doubtless had a mercantile purpose (see §III below). Documents (Dabell, 1984; Banker, 1990, 1991, 1993) provide clues about Piero’s earliest artistic activity. He was paid in Borgo San Sepolcro in June 1431 for painting processional candle poles, and he is recorded there on 29 December 1432 as having assisted Antonio da Anghiari, a local Late Gothic painter, with initial work on the high altarpiece of S Francesco since June 1432. The commission was later abandoned and passed on to Sassetta, whose celebrated altarpiece, completed in 1444, was an important influence on Piero. This early payment (a substantial 56 florins) and others for painting pennants with the insignia of Pope Eugenius IV (reg 1431–47) in 1436 were made through his father (recorded elsewhere in dealings with Antonio), indicating Piero’s youth but also his precocious involvement in local artistic commissions. He is recorded several times in Borgo San Sepolcro until 1438. Florence must have provided a fundamental stimulus for Piero’s development, although there is
only one record of his presence there. On 12 September 1439 he is documented with Domenico Veneziano in a payment relating to the decoration (destr.) of S Egidio (now S Maria Nuova), then the most important Florentine fresco cycle since the Brancacci Chapel (Florence, S Maria del Carmine). Piero was inspired by Domenico’s ordered, rationally lit compositions (especially his St Lucy altarpiece of the 1440s), as well as by his calm, pale Madonnas, whose ovoid heads and almond eyes reappear in Piero’s figures. It is intriguing to imagine the appearance of the work (untraced) that Domenico is documented as having produced in 1450 in Arezzo, where the two painters may have met again.
(ii) The ‘Misericordia’ altarpiece.
In 1442 Piero’s name was drawn from a list of citizens eligible for membership of the town council of Borgo San Sepolcro (not necessarily indicating his actual presence there), the first of many references to his participation in civic affairs. He received a significant commission in the town a year after Sassetta’s altarpiece was set up there. On 11 June 1445 a leading charitable confraternity contracted him to paint a large altarpiece for its church/oratory. The Misericordia altarpiece (Sansepolcro, Pin.) was probably the first major work in the town by a non-Sienese artist. The commission had been in preparation since 1430 (Dabell, 1984), and Piero’s contract specified that the work was to be completed within three years. As with many of Piero’s works, however, there were years of delay, and he interrupted the execution of this polyptych more than once; in early 1455 he was admonished by the patrons. The work was not finished until about 1460. Although the panels of the Misericordia altarpiece are poorly preserved, they reveal the early development of Piero’s style from the loose modelling reminiscent of Masaccio, seen in SS Sebastian and John the Baptist on the left, to the monumental, subtly defined SS John the Evangelist and Bernardino on the right, all of them standing solidly in space, despite the gold background required for this conservative commission. The central figure of the Virgin epitomizes Piero’s concern for statuesque, scrupulously modelled form and is a perfect conjunction of iconography and volumetric description. The supplicants gathered around her typify Piero’s nonindividualizing approach to figures, here depicted with a restrained but telling use of gesture.
(iii) The ‘Baptism’.
The Baptism (London, N.G.) is also an early work, probably begun in the late 1440s; it was the centre of an altarpiece (Sansepolcro Cathedral) that appears archaic when viewed according to Piero’s luminous idiom. The morning light, open sky and distinctive clouds in the Baptism are all characteristic of Piero, while the trees in the landscape background punctuate space like bars of music and provide the same compositional scansion as they do in many of his later works. His interest in light is prominently displayed in the reflective surface of the river. The arrangement of the foreground figures and their deliberate juxtaposition with inanimate, regular Piero della Francesca: Baptism, bodies (e.g. the cylinder of the tree) are early indications of Piero’s egg tempera on panel, 1.67×1.16 m,… enduring interest in rigorously constructed compositions. Here and elsewhere, however, narrative expression always takes precedence over perspectival construction. The remaining part of the altarpiece was entrusted in the mid-1450s to the Sienese workshop of Matteo di Giovanni (also a native of Borgo San Sepolcro) and Giovanni di Pietro, who painted the lateral panels with figures of SS Peter and Paul , pilaster saints and a narrative predella relating to the Baptist, one end of which bears the arms of the Graziani family (all Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.). A roundel with God the Father (untraced) above the central scene may have been painted by Piero. The altarpiece appears to have been constructed by Antonio d’Anghiari (Dabell, 1984) and commissioned for a church dedicated to S Giovanni Battista, either in Val d’Afra or the Pieve (Lightbown).
(iv) Work for courtly patrons.
The signed and dated Penitent St Jerome (1450; Berlin, Gemäldegal.), a small painting in its original frame, is a refined work of the kind Piero provided for his first courtly patrons. These were perhaps the Este in Ferrara, where he painted frescoes (destr.) in S Agostino c. 1449 and where
he doubtless saw examples of work by Rogier van der Weyden or other early Netherlandish painters. Despite the loss of its surface glazes, this work demonstrates Piero’s clarity of composition and depiction of cool, morning light. Its poetic, river-crossed landscape, similar to that of the Baptism , precedes that painted by Bono da Ferrara in the Ovetari Chapel (Padua, Eremitani). A slightly later version of the same subject (Venice, Accad.) depicts a donor and a view of a town like Borgo San Sepolcro. Both works have an intensity of feeling entirely befitting the spiritual subject. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was one of Piero’s most important courtly patrons. His transformation of S Francesco in Rimini into the dynastic Tempio Malatestiano involved Alberti (see fig.), who may have proposed Piero’s services for the votive fresco of Sigismondo Malatesta Venerating St Sigismund (1451; detached, in situ). The careful profile of Sigismondo, repeated in a portrait by Piero (Paris, Louvre), contrasts with the relaxed pose of the saint and with the contrapuntal figures of the two greyhounds, in which courtly and symbolic iconography and natural description are merged. The saint’s hand and orb reveal the painter’s skill in depicting both regular and irregular solids. As in the Baptism and all of Piero’s most successful compositions, there is a visually satisfying sense of interval between the figures here, a remarkable and idiosyncratic feeling for the rhythmical arrangement of solids and voids.
(v) The Perugia altarpiece.
The altarpiece painted for the Franciscan nuns of S Antonio delle Monache, Perugia (Perugia, G.N. Umbria), has been associated with documents of 1469 (Lightbown) but appears to be an earlier work, datable to before the Arezzo frescoes and showing the strong influence of Domenico Veneziano (e.g. his Virgin and Child ; Bucharest, N. Mus. A.). The setting and frame of the main register, the Virgin and Child between SS Anthony of Padua, John the Baptist, Francis and Elizabeth of Hungary , are redolent of the courtly Late Gothic world of Central Italy, while its more modern double predella and unusual gable with the Annunciation , certainly planned from the start, display Piero’s freedom when faced by less restricted sections of a painting. The virtuosity of the architectural description recalls the Urbino Flagellation and the Solomon and Sheba scene in Arezzo, both roughly contemporary.
2. Mature works.
(i) Frescoes for S Francesco, Arezzo.
Piero’s greatest achievement is the fresco cycle of the Legend of the True Cross (Arezzo, S Francesco; see fig.) illustrating Man’s redemption through the story of the wood from the Garden of Eden that became Christ’s Cross. These narrative scenes contain some of the most original and memorable images of the Renaissance, and Piero della Francesca: Battle of their arrangement, which diverges from the traditional chronology of Heraclius and Chosroes (1453– the Golden Legend , is adapted to Franciscan liturgy. The 4), fresco,… sophistication of these paintings is the result of the learned Franciscan programme and the lucid inspiration of Piero. In the initial phase of decoration, the chapel vault and the Last Judgement over the arch facing the nave were painted by the workshop of Bicci di Lorenzo c. 1447. Piero may have begun work very soon thereafter. The commission was the result of a bequest by the Bacci family (the involvement of the humanist Giovanni Bacci, postulated by Ginzburg, is entirely hypothetical). The fresco cycle is undocumented and can be dated only to after 1447, when a partial payment was made by the Bacci to an unnamed painter (usually identified as Bicci); most of the chapel was painted during the early to mid-1450s, and it was certainly finished by 1465. The frescoes may be dated stylistically to a period beginning in the late 1440s (by comparison with the early parts of Piero’s own Misericordia altarpiece) and are reflected in works by other artists painted by the late 1450s (Bellosi, Bertelli). One comparable work is by Giovanni da Piamonte, an assistant of Piero whose hand is recognizable in parts of the frescoes. His Virgin and Child with Saints (Città di Castello, S Maria dei Servi) is signed and dated 1456, which proves that this littleknown painter was an independent master by then. Another work that reflects knowledge of the
lowest tier of frescoes in Arezzo is the St Nicholas predella by Giovanni di Francesco (Florence, Casa Buonarroti), who died in 1459, so adding to the chronological framework. In sizeable sections of the frescoes Piero’s design is more evident than his execution; qualitative unevenness reveals that important passages were delegated to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant. The Raising of the Jew from the Well , for example, was designed by Piero and painted by an assistant (probably Giovanni da Piamonte), but with the correct light-source—such a significant part of Piero’s cerebral approach to art—reversed. Although Vasari’s account of the frescoes in the Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568) is somewhat confused and historically inaccurate, his description is often detailed and perceptive. He noted (Vite, 1568; Eng. trans. by G. de Vere, London, 1912–14, iii, p. 20): "a row of Corinthian columns, divinely well proportioned [in the Solomon and Sheba scene]; and a peasant who, leaning with his hands on his spade, stands listening [in the Discovery of the Cross scene]…. But above every other consideration…is his painting of Night, with an angel in foreshortening who is flying with his head downwards…and with his own light…illuminates the pavilion, the men-at-arms, and all the surroundings [the Dream of Constantine ]…. Piero gives us to know in this darkness how important it is to copy things as they are." Three essential aspects of Piero’s art are touched on here: his interest in perspective, his unaffected naturalism and his skill with light.
(ii) The ‘Flagellation’.
The signed Flagellation (Urbino, Pal. Ducale) is in a sense a summation of Piero’s artistic interests: a rigorous construction based on modular measurements, a conception of composition and istoria worthy of Alberti and the use of Classical figures and architecture, all depicted with his precise and extraordinary command of light. The figure of the man in Turkish dress, whose turban is described with the aid of minuscule pouncing and whose Classical drapery is lit by separate sources of light (the underside of his left hand catches the natural light in a manner reminiscent of Jan van Eyck), represents the summit of Piero’s art. From the 18th century, when the Flagellation was recorded in the sacristy of Urbino Cathedral, descriptions of this enigmatic panel have focused on the identity of the three figures on the right. These were once thought to portray members of the Montefeltro family or to allude to the assassination in 1444 of Oddantonio da Montefeltro by his half-brother Federigo da Montefeltro, later Duke of Urbino and an important patron of Piero. Uncertainty about the date of this picture (probably mid-1450s) and its destination has led to many interpretations. Analyses of its function and meaning have ranged from themes related to the Crusades, in which Christ’s Passion was echoed in contemporary events (Clark, Ginzburg), often with specific identifications of the secular figures with princes or patrons (Lavin, Lightbown, Calvesi), to antiSemitic themes (Lollini). An original interpretation of the scene as the flagellation of St Jerome (Pope-Hennessy, Apollo , 1986), in which much iconographical inconsistency is resolved, sets the painting in the context of a highly cultured court.
(iii) The ‘Resurrection’.
One of Piero’s most celebrated paintings, the Resurrection (after 1458; Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.), is undocumented but is related stylistically to the later Arezzo frescoes. It was frescoed in the Residenza, one of the official chambers of government in Borgo San Sepolcro, in the Sala dei Conservatori, a room completed in 1458. It was clearly modelled on the image of the Resurrection seen in the 14th-century Sienese altarpiece still in the cathedral there. The fresco was probably moved soon after its execution when the room was altered, and it suffered some damage, including the loss of framing elements and parts of the inscription. The commanding figure of the Risen Christ is one of the enduring images of Christian victory in Western art, and the disarray of the slumbering Roman soldiers provides a stirring contrast. As at Arezzo, the setting of the figures close to the foreground lends a dramatic immediacy to the scene.
(iv) Work for S Agostino, Borgo San Sepolcro and the ‘Madonna del
parto’.
On 4 October 1454 Piero had been commissioned by the Augustinian friars of Borgo San Sepolcro and the family of Angelo di Giovanni di Simone and his late brother, Simone di Giovanni di Simone, to paint the high altarpiece of S Agostino. The unusual time limit of eight years suggests that Piero was involved elsewhere at the time. The principal surviving panels of this altarpiece (dispersed), each about 1.33×0.59 m, are linked by a Classical parapet running behind the figures. These include a solemn depiction of St Augustine (Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.), who bears a crystal crozier and whose cope is decorated with freely handled New Testament scenes; a quietly heroic and dazzlingly bejewelled St Michael (London, N.G.), in which part of the throne base and drapery are visible; St John the Evangelist (New York, Frick), with a corresponding element of the throne at his feet; and a corpulent portrait-like image of St Nicholas of Tolentino (Milan, Mus. Poldi Pezzoli). Smaller panels executed by Piero’s workshop and possibly associated with the altarpiece include St Apollonia (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) and two Augustinian saints and a damaged Crucifixion (all three New York, Frick). The Crucifixion contains beautifully depicted horses, which are as monumental as their counterparts in Arezzo and may well be by Piero. Like the Raising of the Jew from the Well scene of the Arezzo frescoes, St Apollonia seems to have been painted by an assistant, as it is lit from the ‘wrong’ side. Archival research has revealed more information about the patrons involved in this altarpiece commission (Banker, 1987) and evidence of the untraced central panel, a Virgin and Child (Polcri, 1990). The work was not completed until at least 1469, and once again stylistic contrasts within its evolution are apparent, from the St John , contemporary with the Arezzo frescoes, to the luminosity of the St Augustine inspired by the Urbino Flagellation . A figure of a youthful saint, usually identified as St Julian (Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ.), which Piero had frescoed earlier in S Agostino, was discovered in 1954. Only the upper part of the body survives, but this fragment beautifully illustrates his skilful use of lighting and the technique of pouncing. These qualities are also evident in a calm image of incomparable devotional strength, the ‘Madonna del parto’ (Virgin with Two Angels), which adorns a small reconstructed cemetery chapel (formerly S Maria a Momentana) near Monterchi. The angels revealing the pregnant Virgin were painted from the same cartoon reversed, a device also used in the contemporary Arezzo frescoes, which provides a powerful symmetry. A more monumental female figure, also undocumented and perhaps painted somewhat later, is the frescoed St Mary Magdalene (Arezzo Cathedral), which is partly cropped.
3. Late works.
Piero is recorded in Urbino only once, as the guest of Giovanni Santi on 8 April 1469, when he came to discuss a projected altarpiece for the confraternity of the Corpus Domini, a commission that had passed to Justus of Ghent by 1473. He must have been in frequent contact with the court of Federigo da Montefeltro, however, which provided him with at least two other commissions. The first of these was probably the candid double portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife Battista Sforza (both Florence, Uffizi), no doubt painted after Battista’s premature death in 1472 and partly a celebration of the ruling couple’s virtues. These are extolled in the elegant humanist Piero della Francesca: Virgin texts on the reverse of each of the bust-length portraits, which have and Child (Brera Altarpiece), mid-1470s (Milan,… in the background one of the most beautiful, airy landscape views of the 15th century. The Brera Altarpiece (Virgin and Child ; Milan, Brera), possibly a work of the mid1470s, was in some ways modelled on a Late Gothic altarpiece (1439; Urbino, Pal. Ducale) commissioned from Antonio Alberti by the father of Federigo, Guidantonio da Montefeltro (reg 1404–43). Both works have a funerary function (Lightbown), and it seems clear that Piero’s altarpiece is a votive work, relating Federigo to his heavenly intercessors. Its beauty derives from the extraordinary union of Renaissance architecture (reflecting the style current in Urbino) and figures in an idealized, ecclesiastical setting. The suspended egg, which has elicited much exaggerated exegesis, is sometimes found in funerary chapels; it provides both a symbol of the Resurrection and a formal parallel to the ovoid head of the Virgin. Among Piero’s last works are the poetic Nativity (London, N.G.), abraded by old, over zealous cleaning but also damaged by a candle-burn, which suggests that it did once stand as a completed altarpiece, and the Senigallia Madonna (Urbino, Pal. Ducale; ex-Senigallia), an intimate depiction of the Virgin and Child between two silvery-blue and pink angels with a view into a background
room. The extraordinary effect of reflected light from the shuttered window there is a distant prelude to Dutch 17th-century painting.
II. Style, working methods and technique.
Since the execution of many of Piero’s paintings was spread over many years, and since his figure types and mode of composition changed little during his long career, it is challenging to provide an accurate chronology of his works. Close scrutiny of certain characteristics, however, provides evidence for some of the change in his style. In physiognomy, there was a gradual shift from rosier to paler flesh tints and a move from fuller, rounder faces with large, expressive eyes and fleshier lips towards smaller eyes and less deeply modelled features. In Piero’s approach to colour, there was a move from saturated tonalities, laid on in broad brushstrokes, to more luminous ones, handled in the latest works with a miniaturist’s fine technique. Some of this shift in use of colour occurred early and may have been the result of a similar development in the work of Domenico Veneziano. The extremes of Piero’s figure style may be perceived by comparing the left-hand saints in the Misericordia altarpiece or the frescoed St Julian in Sansepolcro with the figures in the Brera altarpiece or the Senigallia Madonna . The late change in handling was perhaps the result of failing eyesight, alluded to by Vasari, but which probably occurred very gradually, as the clear handwriting of Piero’s will of 1487 suggests. It is evident that Piero began experimenting with fresco technique early on. His association in Florence in 1439 with Domenico Veneziano, who was using an oil-based medium for at least part of the frescoes in S Egidio, already suggests a move away from traditional buon fresco technique. This may not be as unusual as it has seemed, however. An oil technique in wall painting is mentioned in Cennino Cennini’s Il libro dell’arte , a handbook used by many 15th-century central Italian painters, and analysis of the Arezzo frescoes proves that Piero’s approach to painting there was complex and varied. Piero’s frequent use of pricked cartoons, even for the smallest parts of a composition, is at the heart of his attempt to achieve pictorial perfection. Evidence of their use is visible in both panels and frescoes, for example in the Baptism , the Flagellation and throughout the frescoes in Rimini, Arezzo and Monterchi. In these last two works, symmetry of pose is achieved by the reversing of the cartoon, a method that could also be used to repeat a design and thus save time. This general use of pouncing indicates that Piero was a key figure in the changing application of this technique in the Renaissance, from earlier frescoes, when it was usually used for repeated decorative motifs, to the full-scale cartoons used by Raphael and others. Far from implying a loss of artistic spontaneity, this method could convey the most sophisticated, artfully achieved designs from the workshop to the wall without a loss in quality such as one might risk by using a sinopia , in which the underdrawing is covered with plaster. Within several passages of the Arezzo frescoes (the marquetry door of the Annunciation , for instance) changes of medium are apparent, as if the painter experimented on the spot. Some patches of wall bear marks left by the application of a damp cloth to keep the plaster damp, while many other passages show evidence of retouching a secco , necessary with certain metal pigments, to refine effects of light and shade. Some of the pigmented forms painted after the plaster had dried were later lost, such as leaves on the large tree in the Adamites in the Arezzo frescoes or the left-hand tree in the Resurrection in Sansepolcro (leading writers to misinterpret them as symbolic, withered trees). For bibliography see §IV below.
Frank Dabell
III. Theoretical works.
Throughout the 15th century in Tuscany there was an increasing use of more sophisticated mathematical techniques in many crafts. An examination of artists’ practice in this period, however, strongly suggests that Leon Battista Alberti was over-stating his case when he implied, in De
pictura (1435), that painting generally involved a considerable quantity of exact mathematics. Only one leading artist of the 15th century seems to have had an independent reputation as a mathematician: Piero della Francesca. The identification of manuscripts of mathematical works by Piero and their publication confirm Vasari’s characterization of him as an able mathematician, much of whose work was incorporated into treatises published after his death by his countryman, and possibly pupil, Luca Pacioli. Vasari’s charges that Pacioli was guilty of plagiarism, which thus lowered Piero’s later reputation, must be viewed with caution. Notions of copyright took root only slowly with the advent of printing: even in the 1520s, what should now be regarded as a piece of intellectual property, namely a method of solving cubic equations, seems to have been considered to be heritable. Most 15th-century mathematical treatises, including two of Piero’s, contained numerous problems taken from earlier treatises. Mathematics, particularly algebra, developed very rapidly in the period immediately after Piero’s death, a fact that no doubt contributed to the rapid decline of his reputation as a mathematician; the fortune of Piero’s mathematics was not unlike that of his art. Vasari said that Piero wrote ‘many’ mathematical treatises. Three have been identified: De prospectiva pingendi (‘On perspective for painting’), Trattato d’abaco (‘Abacus treatise’) and De quinque corporibus regularibus (‘On the five regular bodies’, i.e. the five regular solids described in Euclid’s Elements ). The treatise on perspective and the abacus book are both in Italian. The work on the regular solids survives in Latin, but may have been written originally in Italian. The dates of composition are not known exactly, but it is clear, from Piero’s own borrowings and references, that the abacus book (probably written in the 1450s) preceded the work on the regular solids and that the latter was completed after the perspective treatise, probably in the decade after 1482. Partly on account of Pacioli’s ‘plagiarism’ the contents of all three treatises have rather complicated publishing histories. Complete editions have appeared only in modern times. The treatise least used by Pacioli is the one of most obvious concern to the historian of art, namely De prospectiva pingendi . A manuscript with exquisitely neat diagrams, believed by Nicco Fasola to be autograph, is preserved in Parma (Bib. Palatina, MS. 1576). Several later manuscripts are known (some in Latin), confirming other evidence that the work circulated quite widely in the 16th century. Parts of it were incorporated, with acknowledgement, in Daniele Barbaro’s La Prattica della perspettiva (Venice, 1569). De prospectiva pingendi is intended as a practical instruction manual. The reader is presumably regarded as an apprentice, since he is called ‘tu’ throughout and is generally addressed in the imperative while being given detailed instructions for drawing the diagrams. Proofs mainly take the form of merely checking that the result is what Piero asserted. They are usually very brief, much briefer than the drawing instructions. Some proofs are only approximate, suggesting that the successful drawing of the diagram was seen as proof enough. However, a few proofs are fairly elaborate, involving long series of similar triangles and manipulation of ratios. While these techniques are standard for the time, they are not entirely elementary. The apprentice would need to have attended an abacus school to be able to follow such proofs with the fluency Piero seems to expect. (It is probably on account of the level of mathematical skill expected in the reader that De prospectiva pingendi did not find its way into print in the Renaissance.) In the manner of all practical treatises of the time, Piero’s work proceeds almost entirely by means of worked examples. Its first book deals with flat patterns (tiled floors and the plans of simple bodies), the second considers various simple solid figures (such as houses, idealized as cuboids), and the third handles more elaborate objects, such as column capitals and human heads. Several diagrams correspond closely with elements found in the fresco cycle the Legend of the True Cross (Arezzo, S Francesco) and presumably reflect Piero’s preliminary drawings. Piero’s treatise on perspective seems to have been the first of its kind, and it set the pattern for later treatises, although Piero no doubt saw it as part of an established tradition of workshop manuals. The Trattato d’abaco belongs in another tradition of practical texts, that of the elementary mathematical treatises used in abacus schools. These treatises—which derive their name from the Liber abaci (1202) of Leonardo of Pisa (c. 1170–?1250)—are largely concerned with arithmetic, but usually also contain a little algebra and may sometimes include a few geometrical problems. The exposition is by series of worked examples. Piero’s Trattato is written in this way, though the introduction makes it clear that the work was not written for use in a school, but at the request of a friend or patron. It was probably a manual for merchants and was dedicated to a member of a local family, the Pichi (related to Piero’s own family). There are two known manuscripts of the work; the one Arrighi believes to be autograph is in Florence (Bib. Medicea–Laurenziana, MS. Ashb. 280/359–291). Most of Piero’s arithmetical and algebraic problems can be found in earlier treatises, but his geometrical problems, of which there is an unusually large number, show
considerable originality, notably in dealing with three-dimensional figures. In particular, Piero gives descriptions of four of the polyhedra whose discovery Pappus of Alexandria (5th century AD) ascribes to Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC). Pappus’ account merely lists the number of faces of each type. Piero shows what the solids actually look like, by describing how the faces are distributed round each corner of the solid. He is thus to be credited with having rediscovered the solids. Many of the problems in Piero’s Trattato were printed, verbatim or with very minor changes, in Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica (Venice, 1494). Piero’s treatise De quinque corporibus regularibus is dedicated to Guidobaldo I, Duke of Urbino. This dedication must date from after Guidobaldo’s accession to the title, in 1482, so it is probable that the treatise was at least finished in the last decade of Piero’s life. The single surviving manuscript is in Rome (Vatican, Bib. Apostolica, Cod. Urb. 273). The text is in Latin, but the work nonetheless has much in common with the vernacular Trattato d’abaco , including many repeated problems (usually treated in a more detailed manner in the later work). The later treatise is original in being concerned only with geometry, however. Its first part deals with problems of plane figures, the second considers the five regular polyhedra individually, the third solves the problems involved in inscribing one regular polyhedron inside another (with numerous references to Elements , XV, a book formerly considered to be by Euclid). The fourth part of Piero’s work deals with bodies that Piero calls ‘irregular’, though most of them (such as his Archimedean polyhedra, already discussed in the Trattato ) can be inscribed in a sphere, and almost all show considerable symmetry. Several of Piero’s geometrical problems are original in requiring the construction of a sphere with volume equal to that of a given solid. Piero’s treatise on the regular solids was printed, complete but in Italian translation, as the third part of Pacioli’s De divina proportione (Venice, 1509). Piero was undoubtedly a very able mathematician. His mathematical works are not only unusually orderly in their presentation but also show an unusual degree of originality (for their time) both in the extent to which they deal with geometrical problems and in the choice of the problems themselves. It is, however, difficult to establish any simple connection between Piero’s mathematics and his paintings. His use of perspective seems to be broadly similar to that of most of his contemporaries, although he is exceptional in his adeptness at balancing composition in space with composition in the plane, and the famous ‘stillness’ of his works may be due to his having made exact perspective calculations for an unusually large number of elements (thus, for example, making all heads appear exactly equal). Piero’s strong sense of order and of symmetry certainly should be seen as links between his mathematics and his art, although they by no means provide complete characterizations of either.
Writings
G. Mancini, ed.: Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus (Rome, 1916); also in G. Mancini: ‘L’opera “De corporibus regularibus” di Pietro Franceschi detto della Francesca usurpata da Fra Luca Pacioli’, Mem. Accad. Lincei, 15th ser., xiv, pp. 441–580 G. Nicco Fasola, ed.: De prospectiva pingendi (Florence, 1942/ R Florence, 1984) G. Arrighi, ed.: Trattato d’abaco (Pisa, 1970)
Bibliography
S. A. Jaywardene: ‘The “Trattato d’abaco” of Piero della Francesca’, Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance , ed. C. H. Clough (Manchester, 1976) M. D. Davis: Piero della Francesca’s Mathematical Treatises: The ‘Trattato d’abaco’ and ‘Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus’ (Ravenna, 1977) O. Calabrese, ed.: Piero teorico d’arte (Rome, 1985) R. Franci and L. Toti Rigatelli: ‘Towards a History of Algebra from Leonardo of Pisa to Luca Pacioli’, Janus , lxxii (1985), pp. 17–82
J.V. Field
IV. Critical reception and posthumous reputation.
Piero is first mentioned during his own lifetime, but only in passing, by Filarete in his Trattato and by Giovanni Santi in his life of Federigo da Montefeltro . Luca Pacioli, who called him a ‘monarch’ of painting and was mainly concerned with his theoretical works, was the first to state that Piero worked in Bologna, Ferrara (specified later by Vasari as decoration in the Palazzo Ducale and a chapel in S Agostino), Rimini and Urbino. Although several of the works mentioned are untraced, there is no reason to doubt the accounts of Pacioli or Vasari. Vasari, who also stressed Piero’s skill as mathematician, referred to his work in Pesaro (the Flagellation , according to Lightbown), Ancona (a Marriage of the Virgin in S Ciriaco) and Loreto (in the sacristy, S Casa, with Domenico Veneziano). Piero’s reputation as painter declined after the 16th century, and it was only in local studies of the early 19th century, such as F. Gherardi Dragomanni’s edition (1835) of Vasari’s 1550 biography, that his oeuvre began to be examined critically. J. Crowe and G. Cavalcaselle, in the New History of Painting in Italy (London, 1864), and soon after them Bernard Berenson in the Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance (London, 1897), led the way to a modern reappraisal. In the 20th century early local studies of Piero and his impact around Arezzo by Salmi and others (summarized in 1979) were followed by landmark publications by Roberto Longhi (reassembled in 1963), whose fundamental and poetic appreciation of Piero in the context of his contemporaries set the stage for his reception in Italy. Berenson, who employed a connoisseur’s approach to Piero in 1897, later wrote an essay, Piero della Francesca or the Ineloquent in Art (London, 1954), in which Piero’s classical restraint is equated with essential form. In the Anglo-Saxon world, Piero’s name became more familiar after the Baptism was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1861, and the Resurrection was acclaimed by John Addington Symonds as ‘by far the grandest, most poetic and most awe-inspiring picture of the Resurrection’ (Renaissance in Italy , 1875–86). Aldous Huxley declared in an essay of 1925 that the Resurrection was ‘the best picture’, and Piero was championed in 1951 by Kenneth Clark, who endorsed Huxley’s view in the television series Civilisation (1969). An extensive text by Battisti (1971) contains a large but unevenly transcribed body of documents assembled by Settesoldi. In the fifth centenary of Piero’s death a number of penetrating but idiosyncratic monographs were issued, and archival discoveries were matched by the publication of important technical data.
Bibliography
Early sources
Filarete [Antonio Averlino]: Trattato del architettura (MS.; early 1460s); ed. J. R. Spencer (New Haven, 1965), ii G. Santi: La vita e le gesta di Federico di Montefeltro, Duca d’Urbino (MS.; c. 1482); ed. L. Michelini Tocci (Vatican City, 1985), ii, pp. 673–4 L. Pacioli: Summa de arithmetica (Venice, 1494), fols 2 r , 68 v L. Pacioli: De divina proportione … (Venice, 1509), fols 23 r , 33 r G. Vasari: Le vite di più eccelenti [sic] architetti, pittori, et scultori (Florence, 1550); ed. L. Bellosi and A. Rossi (Turin, 1986), pp. 337–43 G. Vasari: Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85 ), ii, pp. 487–501
General
J. Crowe and G. Cavalcaselle: New History of Painting in Italy (London, 1864) E. Borsook: The Mural Painters of Tuscany from Cimabue to Andrea del Castagno (London, 1960, rev. Oxford, 2/1980) B. Berenson: Central and North Italian Schools (1968)
M. Aronberg Lavin: The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago, 1990), pp. 167–94 J. R. Banker : The Culture of San Sepolcro during the Youth of Piero della Francesca (Ann Arbor, MI, 2003)
Monographs
K. Clark: Piero della Francesca (London, 1951, rev. 2/1969) B. Berenson: Piero della Francesca or the Ineloquent in Art (London, 1954) R. Longhi: Piero della Francesca (1963), iii of Opere complete di Roberto Longhi (Florence, 1963)
G. Gilbert: Change in Piero della Francesca (Locust Valley, 1968) P. Hendy: Piero della Francesca and the Early Renaissance (London, 1968) P. de Vecchi: The Complete Paintings of Piero della Francesca (London, 1970/ R Harmondsworth, 1985)
E. Battisti: Piero della Francesca , 2 vols (Milan, 1971, rev. 2/1992) M. Salmi: La pittura di Piero della Francesca (Novara, 1979) B. Cole: Piero della Francesca: Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Art (New York, 1991) J. Pope-Hennessy: The Piero della Francesca Trail (London, 1991) M. Aronberg Lavin: Piero della Francesca (London and New York, 1992) C. Bertelli: Piero della Francesca (London and New Haven, 1992) R. Lightbown: Piero della Francesca (New York, London and Paris, 1992) M. Calvesi : Piero della Francesca (Turin, 1998) C. Prete, ed.: Piero interpretato: Copie, giudizi e musealizzazione di Piero della Francesca (Ancona, 1998)
J. M. Wood, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca (Cambridge, 2002) J. V. Field : Piero della Francesca: A Mathematician’s Art (New Haven, 2005) B. Roeck : Mörder, Maler und Mäzene: Piero della Francesca ‘Geisselung’: eine kunsthistorische Kriminalgeschichte (Munich, 2006)
Exhibition catalogues and symposia
Federico di Montefeltro, lo stato, le arti, la cultura: Atti del convegno di studi organizzato dallo centro studi sulle società dell’antico regime: Urbino, 1982 Piero della Francesca e il novecento (exh. cat., Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ., 1991) Monarco della pintura: Piero and his Legacy: Washington, DC, 1992 La ‘Madonna del parto’ in restauro (exh. cat., ed. G. Centauro; Monterchi, Scu. Via Reglia, 1992)
Nel raggio di Piero (exh. cat., ed. L. Berti; Sansepolcro, Mus. Civ., 1992) Piero e Urbino, Piero e le corti rinascimentali (exh. cat., ed. P. dal Poggetto; Urbino, Pal. Ducale, 1992)
Una scuola per Piero: Luce, colore e prospettiva nella formazione fiorentina di Piero della Francesca (exh. cat., ed. L. Bellosi; Florence, Uffizi, 1992–3 ) Il polittico agostiniano di Piero della Francesca (exh. cat., ed. A. di Lorenzo; Milan, Mus. Poldi-Pezzoli,
1996) I Della Rovere: Piero della Francesca, Raffaello, Tiziano (exh. cat., ed. P. Dal Poggetto; Senigallia, Palazzo del Duca; Urbino, Pal. Ducale; Pesaro, Pal. Ducale; Urbania, Museo Civico, 2004) Piero della Francesca e le corti italiane (exh. cat., eds C. Bertelli and A. Paolucci; Arezzo, Gal & Mus. Med. & Mod., 2007)
Specialist studies
Specific paintings
M. Aronberg Lavin: Piero della Francesca: The ‘Flagellation’ (Chicago and London, 1972, rev. Chicago, 2/1990) M. Aronberg Lavin: Piero della Francesca’s ‘Baptism of Christ’ (New Haven, 1981) P. Scapecchi: ‘Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Piero della Francesca e gli affreschi di Arezzo’, Prospettiva [Florence], 32 (1983), pp. 71–6 M. Aronberg Lavin and M. Laclotte: Piero della Francesca a Rimini: L’affresco nel Tempio Malatestiano (Bologna, 1984) C. Ginzburg: The Enigma of Piero: The ‘Baptism’, the Arezzo Cycle, the ‘Flagellation’ (London, 1985); review by P. Black in Oxford A. J. , ix/2 (1986) J. Pope-Hennessy: ‘Whose Flagellation ?’, Apollo , cxxiv (1986), pp. 162–5 J. R. Banker: ‘Piero della Francesca’s S Agostino Altarpiece: Some New Documents’, Burl. Mag. , cxxix (1987), pp. 642–51 L. Bellosi: ‘Giovanni di Piamonte e gli affreschi di Piero ad Arezzo’, Prospettiva [Florence], 50 (1987), pp. 15–35 J. Guillaud and M. Guillaud: Piero della Francesca, Poet of Form: The Frescoes of San Francesco in Arezzo (Paris and New York, 1988) M. G. Paolini, ed.: Ricerche su Piero (Siena, 1989) [essays on the Resurrection , St Louis of Toulouse and Perugia] Progetto per Piero della Francesca: Indagini diagnostico-conoscitive per la conservazione della ‘Leggenda della Vera Croce’ e della ‘Madonna del parto’ (Florence, 1989) G. Centauro: Dipinti murali di Piero della Francesca. La basilica di S Francesco ad Arezzo: Indagini su sette secoli (Milan, 1990) F. Lollini: ‘Ancora la Flagellazione: Addenda di bibliografia (e di metodo)’, Boll. A. , 67 (1991), pp. 149–50
F. Lollini: ‘Una possibile connotazione antiebraica della Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca’, Boll. A. , 65 (1991), pp. 1–28 E. F. Londei: ‘La scena della Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: La sua identificazione con un luogo di Urbino del quattrocento’, Boll. A. , 65 (1991), pp. 29–66 A. S. Tessari: ‘La Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: Ovvero l’instaurazione del Regno di Cristo’, A. Crist. , 745 (1991), pp. 277–86 M. Calvesi: ‘La Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: Identikit di un enigma’, A. & Dossier , 70 (1992), pp. 22–7 Piero della Francesca: Il polittico di Sant’ Antonio (exh. cat., ed. V. Garibaldi; Perugia, Rocca Paolina, 1993) M. A. Lavin: Piero della Francesca: San Francesco, Arezzo (New York, 1994) S. Nessi: ‘Il Sant’Antonio di Padova di Piero della Francesca nel polittico di Perugia’, Santo, xxxiv/1 (Jan– April 1994), pp. 95–8
J. R. Banker: ‘The Altarpiece of the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Borgo Sansepolcro’, Piero della Francesca and his Legacy (Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 21–35 B. Diemling: ‘ The Meeting of the Queen of Sheba with Solomon : Crusade Propaganda in the Fresco Cycle of Piero della Francesca in Arezzo’, Bruckmanns Pantheon , liii (1995), pp. 18–28 M. Michael: Piero della Francesca: The Arezzo Frescoes (London, 1996) D. Arasse: ‘Piero della Francesca: La Legende d’Arezzo: Restoration of Mural Paintings at Basilica di San Francesco, Italy’, L’Oeil , 487 (1997), pp. 44–57 H. Damisch : ‘Piera della Francescas Madonna del Parto: Die Konstruktion einer Kinderheitserinnerung’, Aufklärung anstelle von Andacht: Kulturwissenschaftliche Dimensionen bildender Kunst , ed. K. Herding (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), pp. 120–32 L. Simi : ‘La Flagellazione di Piero della Francesca: Un bilancio (provvisorio) e una proposta’, ‘Guardate con i vostri occhi …’: Saggi di storia dell’arte nelle Marche, ed. A. Montironi (Ascoli Piceno, 2002), pp. 111–43 Y. Bonnefoy : ‘La strategia dell’enigma: Piera della Francesca e “La Flagellazione di Cristo”’, La civiltà delle immagini: Pittori e poeti d’Italia, ed. Y. Bonnefoy (Rome, 2005), pp. 15–42 P. Longo : ‘Lo spazio nella “Flagellazione” di Piero della Francesca’, Prospettiva e geometria dello spazio (La Spezia, 2005), pp. 69–81 H. Wenzel : ‘Piero della Francesca: die Madonna mite der Perle’, Möglichkeitsräume: zur Performativität von sensorischer Wahrnehmung , ed. C. Lechtermann (Berlin, 2007), pp. 229–53 A. Dillon Bussi : ‘Il “Dittico degli incontri” e altre opere urbinate di Piero della Francesca’, Paragone, n. s. 3, lix/80 (2008), pp. 20–39
Other
M. Salmi: ‘Perchè “Piero della Francesca”?’, Commentari, 27 (1976), pp. 121–6 J. Beck: ‘Una data per Piero della Francesca’, Prospettiva [Florence], 25 (1978), p. 53 R. Cocke: ‘Piero della Francesca and the Development of Italian Landscape Painting’, Burl. Mag. , cxxii (1980), pp. 627–31 G. Agosti and V. Farinella: ‘Calore del marmo. Pratica e tipologia della deduzioni iconografiche. Un artista: Piero della Francesca, per esempio’, Memoria dell’ antico nell’ arte italiana, ed. S. Settis, i (Turin, 1984), pp. 427–40 F. Dabell: ‘Antonio d’Anghiari e gli inizi di Piero della Francesca’, Paragone, 417 (1984), pp. 71–94
P. Scapecchi: ‘Tu celebras burgi iam cuncta per oppida nomen: Appunti per Piero della Francesca’, A. Crist. (1984), pp. 209–21 J. Triolo: ‘Aggiunte bibliografiche a “Piero della Francesca”, 1970–83 ’, Piero teorico dell’arte , ed. O. Calabrese (Rome, 1985), pp. 287–99 J. Pope-Hennessy: ‘The Mystery of a Master’, New Repub. , 3715 (1986), pp. 38–41 A. Turchini: ‘L’imperatore, il santo e il cavaliere: Note su Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta e Piero della Francesca’, A. Crist. , 714 (1986), pp. 165–80 F. Polcri: ‘A proposito di Piero della Francesca: Nuove fonti archivistiche a Sansepolcro’, Prop. & Ric., 21 (1988), pp. 39–54 J. R. Banker: ‘Un documento inedito del 1432 sull’attività di Piero della Francesca per la chiesa di San Francesco in Borgo S Sepolcro’, Rivista d’arte [prev. pubd as Misc. A.], 4th ser., vi (1990), pp. 245–7
F. Polcri: Due ritrovamenti d’archivio a Sansepolcro: Un inedito sul polittico degli Agostiniani di Piero della Francesca (Sansepolcro, 1990) F. Polcri: ‘Ritrovamenti pierfrancescani nell’archivio giudiziario di Sansepolcro’, Atti Mem. Accad. Petrarca Lett., A. & Sci. , n. s., i (1990), pp. 203–17
F. Dabell: ‘New Documents for the History and Patronage of the Compagnia della SS Trinità in Arezzo’, A. Crist. , 747 (1991), pp. 412–17 D. Franklin: ‘An Unrecorded Commission for Piero della Francesca in Arezzo’, Burl. Mag. , cxxxiii (1991), pp. 193–4 L. B. Kanter: ‘Luca Signorelli, Piero della Francesca, and Pietro Perugino’, Stud. Stor. A. , i (1991), pp. 95–111 J. R. Banker: ‘Piero della Francesca, il fratello Don Francesco di Benedetto e Francesco dal Borgo’, Prospettiva , 68 (1992), pp. 54–6 C. B. Cappel: ‘On “la testa proportionalmente degradata”: Luca Signorelli, Leonardo, and Piero della Francesca’s De prospectiva pingendi ’, Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Papers from a Colloquium held at the Villa Spelman: Florence, 1992 , pp. 17–43 P. G. Pasini: Piero e i Malatesti: L’attività di Piero della Francesca per le corti romagnole (Milan, 1992)
J. R. Banker: ‘Piero della Francesca as Assistant to Antonio d’Anghiari in the 1430s: Some Unpublished Documents’, Burl. Mag. , cxxxv (1993), pp. 16–21 C. E. Gilbert: Piero della Francesca et Giorgione: Problèmes d’interprétation (Paris, 1994) M. Aronberg Lavin, ed.: Piero della Francesca and his Legacy (Washington, DC, 1995) C. Cieri Via and M. Emiliani Dalai, eds: Piero 500 anni (Venice, 1995) M. Kemp: ‘In the Light of Dante: Meditations on Natural and Divine Light in Piero della Francesca, Raphael and Michelangelo’, Ars naturam adiuvans: Festschrift für Matthias Winner, ed. V. V. Flemming and S. Schutze (Mainz, 1996), pp. 160–77 R. Bellucci and C. Frosinini: ‘Esempi di studio dell’ “underdrawing”: Il caso di Piero della Francesca’, Oltre il visibile: Indagini riflettografiche , ed. D. Bertani (Milan, 2001), pp. 145–66 C. Bertelli : ‘Il ritratto nell’opera di Piero della Francesca’, Le metamorfosi del ritratto , ed. R. Zorzi (Florence, 2002), pp. 63–72 M. Aronberg Lavin : ‘Piero della Francesca and Narrative Encapsulation: e.g., the Cock on the Column’, Artibus & Hist., xxv/49 (2004), pp. 9–18 C. Bertelli : ‘Mantegna e Piero della Francesca a Ferrara’, Nel segno di Andrea Mantegna: Arte e cultura a Mantova in età rinascimentale (Modena, 2006), pp. 62–7 C. S. Wood : ‘Piero della Francesca, Liminologist’, Bilder, Räume, Betrachter: Festschrift für Wolfgang Kemp zum 60. Geburtstag , ed. S. Bogen (Berlin, 2006), pp. 252–69 A. Antoniutti : ‘Piero della Francesca a Roma, la committenza di Pio II e del cardinale Guillaume d’Estouteville’, Il ’400 a Roma: La rinascita delle arti da Donatello a Perugino , ed. M. G. Bernardini (Milan, 2008), pp. 161–7
Frank Dabell
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