Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 5, 2021: Piero della Francesca, an Italian painter (Early renaissance) (#1249)

Monday, April 5, 2021

Artist of the Day, April 5, 2021: Piero della Francesca, an Italian painter (Early renaissance) (#1249)

Piero della Francesca (1415-1492), originally named Piero di Benedetto, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective.

Piero was born Piero di Benedetto in the town of Borgo Santo Sepolcro, modern-day Tuscany. His father died before his birth, and he was called Piero della Francesca after his mother, who was referred to as "la Francesca" due to her marriage into the Franceschi family

In 1439 Piero received, together with Domenico Veneziano, payments for his work on frescoes for the church of Sant'Egidio in Florence, now lost. In Florence he must have met leading masters like Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello, and Brunelleschi. The classicism of Masaccio's frescoes and his majestic figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were for him an important source of inspiration. Dating of Piero's undocumented work is difficult because his style does not seem to have developed over the years.

Piero returned to his hometown in 1442 and was elected to the City Council of Sansepolcro. Three years later, he received his first commission, to paint the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, which was completed in the early 1460s. In 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of Sant'Andrea of Ferrara, now also lost. His influence was particularly strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura.

Two years later he was in Rimini, working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. In 1451, during that sojourn, he executed the famous fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, as well as a portrait of Sigismondo. In Rimini, Piero may have met the famous Renaissance mathematician and architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had redesigned the Tempio Malatestiano, although it is known that Alberti directed the execution of his designs for the church by correspondence with his building supervisor. Thereafter Piero was active in Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna.

In 1454, he signed a contract for the Polyptych of Saint Augustine in the church of Sant'Agostino in Sansepolcro. The central panel of this polyptych is lost, and the four panels of the wings, with representations of saints, are now scattered around the world. A few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome, where he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, painting frescoes in the Vatican Palace, which have since been destroyed.

In 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished in 1464. The History of the True Cross cycle of frescoes is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from legendary medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found. These stories were collected in the Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varazze (Jacopo da Varagine) of the mid-13th century.

At some point, Giovanni Santi invited Piero to Urbino. Between 1469 and 1486 Piero worked repeatedly in the service of Count Federico III da Montefeltro (Duke in 1474). The Flagellation is generally considered Piero's oldest work in Urbino (c. 1455–1470). It is one of the most famous and controversial pictures of the early Renaissance. As discussed in its own entry, it is marked by an air of geometric sobriety, in addition to presenting a perplexing enigma as to the nature of the three men standing at the foreground.

Another famous work painted in Urbino is the Double Portrait of Federico and his wife Battista Sforza, in the Uffizi. The portraits in profile take their inspiration from large bronze medals and stucco roundels with the official portraits of Fedederico and his wife.

In his later years, painters such as Perugino and Luca Signorelli frequently visited his workshop. He completed the treatise On Perspective in painting in the mid-1470s to 1480s. By 1480, his vision began to deteriorate, but he continued writing treatises such as Short Book on the Five Regular Solids in 1485. It is documented that Piero rented a house in Rimini in 1482. Piero made his will in 1487 and he died five years later.

Piero's deep interest in the theoretical study of perspective and his contemplative approach to his paintings are apparent in all his work. In his youth, Piero was trained in mathematics, which most likely was for mercantilism. The subjects covered include arithmetic, algebra, geometry and innovative work in both solid geometry and perspective. Much of Piero's work was later absorbed into the writing of others, notably Luca Pacioli.

In the late 1450s, Piero copied and illustrated the following works of Archimedes: On the Sphere and Cylinder, Measurement of a Circle, On Conoids and Spheroids, On Spirals, On the Equilibrium of Planes, The Quadrature of the Parabola, and The Sand Reckoner. The manuscript consists of 82 folio leaves, is held in the collection of the Biblioteca Riccardiana[19] and is a copy of the translation of the Archimedean corpus made by Italian humanist Iacopo da San Cassiano.

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