Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter active in the Early Renaissance. Standing out for their placid humanism, well-ordered exploration of perspective and the presence of geometric shapes, his paintings and frescoes also made him famous as a mathematician and geometer. The fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross and the diptych portrait of Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his consort are among his best-known works.
Background
Piero della Francesca was born about 1415-1417 in Sansepolcro, Republic of Florence (present-day Sansepolcro, Tuscany, Italy). He was a third child of Benedetto de' Franceschi and Romana di Perino da Monterchi, both descendents of the noble Florentine and Tuscan Franceschi family. They were merchants associated with leather, wool and shoemaking.
Education
Piero della Francesca never knew his father because he died before his birth. There is little information on della Francesca's early training, but it is known that, according to an art historian Giorgio Vasari, he probably attended the local school of his hometown where he had an interest in mathematics. Piero was supported by his mother in his passion both for exact sciences and liberal arts, including Latin.
It is also supposed that Piero della Francesca was likely an apprentice of a local painter Antonio d'Anghiari, who in turn was influenced by Sienese art. There are surviving notes indicating that Piero assisted d'Anghiari in 1432 and May 1438.
Career
The start of Piero della Franceso's career can be counted from his tenure in Florence where he began to work in 1439 as an associate of Domenico Veneziano, who was then making frescoes for the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. While in the city, Piero was exposed to the early Renaissance art which became the basis for his own style.
Piero explored such artistic and philosophical sources as the statuary of Donatello and Luca della Robbia, the buildings of Filippo Brunelleschi and the paintings of Masaccio and Fra Angelico, as well as a theoretical treatise on painting by the humanist and architect Leon Battista Alberti. He got acquainted with a great number of painters, nobles, scholars and thinkers who in turn connected him with rich patrons.
Upon his return to Sansepolcro in 1442, Piero della Francesca was elected to the town council. Three years later, the painter was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the Confraternita della Misericordia on which he worked for the following twenty years. Although Piero worked on various commissions throughout his life, which he received from many Italian cities, like Ferrara and Rimini, he regularly came back to his calm native town.
In about 1448, Piero della Francesca likely served for Marchese Leonello d'Este in Ferrara. Three years later, while in Rimini, the painter produced a heraldic fresco of Sigismondo Malatesta Before St. Sigismund in the memorial church Tempio Malatestiano. The Baptism of Christ dates to the same year.
From 1452 to 1466, Piero worked on a cycle of frescoes in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, begun by Bicci di Lorenzo and uncompleted because of his death. The resulting Legend of the True Cross is considered to be one of the major projects of della Francesca. Several commissions were simultaneous to the project, including a fresco of the Magdalen in Arezzo cathedral, the Resurrection in the Palazzo Comunale in Sansepolcro, Madonna del Parto in the chapel of the cemetery in Monterchi and an altarpiece for S. Agostino in Sansepolcro, finished in 1469. In 1459, Piero della Francesca traveled to Rome, being requested to paint frescoes (now destroyed) for Pope Pius II in the Vatican.
Della Francesca's mastery and popularity provided him with the patronage of Dukes of Ferrara and Urbino. While serving to the latter, Count (later Duke) Federico da Montefeltro, the painter produced another of his masterpieces, The Flagellation of Christ. A famous diptych portrait of the Duke and his spouse, Battista Sforza, was probably started in 1465. Della Francesca remained in the court of Urbino till about the end of the 1470s.
Piero della Francesca devoted the two last decades of his life mainly to his childish interest in mathematics. A treatise on painting, De prospectiva pingendi (On Perspective in Painting), written by the painter between 1474 and 1482, was followed by the De quinque corporibus regularibus (On the Five Regular Bodies) some time after 1482. In the writings, della Francesca covered such topics, as arithmetic, algebra and geometry in terms of how they are connected with painting.
Meeting between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon
(detail)
Vision of Constantine
(detail)
Annunciation
(detail)
Procession of the Queen of Sheba
(detail)
Recognition of the True Cross
(detail)
Constantine's Victory over Maxentius
Torment of the Jew
Heraclius Restores the Cross to Jerusalem
Procession of the Queen of Sheba
Annunciation
Meeting between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon
Finding and Recognition of the True Cross
Burial of the Holy Wood
Angel
Finding of the True Cross
Recognition of the True Cross
Death of Adam
Procession of the Queen of Sheba and Meeting between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon
Madonna del Parto
Queen of Sheba
The Dream of Constantine
The Resurrection
Prophet
Angel
St. Julian
St. Ludovico
View of the Cappella Maggiore
Exaltation of the Cross: Heraclius Enters Jerusalem with the Cross
Prophet
Battle between Heraclius and Chosroes
St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta
Head of an Angel
Saint Mary Magdalen
painting
Triumph of Federico da Montefeltro
Federico da Montefeltro
Polyptych of the Misericordia
Baptism of Christ
St. Anthony Resurrects a Child
St. Michael
St. Andrew and St. Bernardino
Polyptych of St. Anthony
St. Francis
St. Augustine and St. Michael
St. Sebastian and John the Baptist
Sigismondo Malatesta
St. Francis and St. Elizabeth
Diptych of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza
St. Elizabeth Saves a Boy
The Stigmatisation of St. Francis
The Penance of St. Jerome
Triumph of Battista Sforza
Crucifixion
St. Benedict
Archangel Gabriel
Portrait of a Boy
St. John the Evangelist and St. Nicholas of Tolentino
Augustinian Saint
Nativity
Crucifixion
Hercules
The Annunciation
St. Jerome and a Donor
Madonna and Child
Madonna of Senigallia with Child and Two Angels
The Madonna of Mercy
Ideal City
Madonna and Child Attended by Angels
The Flagellation of Christ
Madonna and Child with Saints
Virgin and Child
Religion
Piero della Francesca was baptized in the local church of his native town of Sansepolcro.
Views
Quotations:
"Painting is nothing but a representation of surfaces and solids foreshortened or enlarged, and put on the plane of the picture in accordance with the fashion in which the real objects seen by the eye appear on this plane."
"Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art."
Membership
Piero della Francesca became a member of the Sansepolcro's St. Bartholomew Confraternity (Confraternita di San Bartolomeo) in 1480.
St. Bartholomew Сonfraternity
,
Italy
1480
Personality
Piero della Francesca was named after his mother.
Physical Characteristics:
According to an art historian Giorgio Vasari, Piero della Francesca lost his sight in his late years. If true, this might have occurred after 1490 because several autographs from that year survived. Moreover, his will of 1486 mentions Piero as aged but of sound mind and body.
Interests
geometry, algebra, arithmetic
Connections
Piero della Francesca was never married and had no children.
Piero della Francesca
An English version of the third edition of Longhi's seminal work on the Renaissance painter with an introduction by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Keith Christiansen.
2009
The Piero della Francesca Trail
More personal and sophisticated than a standard guidebook, this essential guide to the Piero masterpieces provides a rare glimpse of the workings of the heart and mind of art historian John Pope-Hennessy as he looks at and thinks about the paintings and frescoes.
2002
Piero della Francesca: Artist and Man
The book integrates the story of Piero's artistic and mathematical achievements with the full chronicle of his life for the first time, fortified by the discovery of over one hundred previously unknown documents, most unearthed by the author himself.
2013
Piero della Francesca
The book includes a biography of the Italian painter, compares his work with that of other artists of his time, discusses his mathematic and geometric theories and provides a complete catalog of his work.
1992
Piero della Francesca: A Mathematician's Art
The first combined study of Piero's work as a mathematician and as a painter, this book explores the connections between these two activities and thus enhances readers' understanding of both his paintings and his writings.
2005
Piero della Francesca
From his formative years in Florence to his seminal mid-career frescoes in the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, and his later work in Rome, Perugia and Urbino, these pages capture Piero's extraordinary palette, his development of perspective and the remarkably expressive faces of his subjects.
1998
Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters
This book tells the story of Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca by focusing on four paintings he created over the span of his career and brims with revelatory details about his work that will intrigue both casual readers and devoted fans of the artist.
2014
Piero della Francesca
The book features a literary introduction by a renowned art historian, a thoroughly researched essay and captions describing the artist's most famous canvases.