Background
Piero della Francesca was born in 1415 in Sansepolcro, Italy, to Benedetto de' Franceschi, a tradesman, and Romana di Perino da Monterchi, members of the Florentine and Tuscan Franceschi noble family.
Piero della Francesca was born in 1415 in Sansepolcro, Italy, to Benedetto de' Franceschi, a tradesman, and Romana di Perino da Monterchi, members of the Florentine and Tuscan Franceschi noble family.
Nothing is known about Piero’s early training as a painter, though it is assumed that he was instructed by local painter Antonio di Giovanni d'Anghiari who had been influenced by Sienese art.
In 1439 Piero worked as an associate of Domenico Veneziano, who was then painting frescoes for the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, where the early Renaissance style was beginning to flourish. Undoubtedly, he would have been directed to these luminaries by Domenico Veneziano, whose own works demonstrate a Renaissance emphasis on colour and light as elements of pictorial construction. It was this contact with the early Renaissance art of Florence that provided the foundation of Piero’s own style.
Back in Piero's native town Sansepolcro by 1442, Piero was elected to the town council. Three years later the Confraternita della Misericordia commissioned a polyptych from him. "The Misericordia Altarpiece" shows Piero’s indebtedness to the Florentines Donatello and Masaccio, his fondness for geometric form, and the slowness and deliberation with which he habitually worked — for the "Misericordia altarpiece" was not completed until 1462.
Around 1448 Piero probably worked in the service of Marchese Leonello d’Este in Ferrara, where he may have been influenced by northern Italian art. In 1451, at another northern Italian city, Rimini, he executed a splendidly heraldic fresco of "Sigismondo Malatesta Before St. Sigismund" in the Tempio Malatestiano, a memorial church built according to the architectural designs of Alberti. Also to this early formative period before 1451 belongs "The Baptism of Christ." This painting, probably the central panel for an altarpiece for the Pieve of Sansepolcro, shows the elements that remained a constant in Piero’s style to his death.
In 1454, Piero 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 before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456. The cycle of frescoes, depicting the "Legend of the True Cross", is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from legendary medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found. These stories were collected in the "Golden Legend" of Jacopo da Varagine of the mid-13th century.
Between 1469 and 1486 Piero della Francesca worked repeatedly in the service of Count Federico III da Montefeltro. According to Giorgio Vasari, Piero would have worked for Federico's father Guidantonio, who died in February 1443. However, this is unlikely because this statement is not confirmed by documents or paintings. Vasari may have confused Guidantonio with Federico. "The Flagellation" is generally considered Piero's oldest work in Urbino. 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. Other paintings made in Urbino are the monumental "Montefeltro Altarpiece" in the Brera Gallery in Milan and probably also the "Madonna of Senigallia."
In Piero's old age Piero seems to have abandoned painting in favour of more abstruse pursuits. Between 1474 and 1482 he wrote a treatise on painting, “On Perspective in Painting”, dedicated to his patron, the Duke of Urbino. A second treatise, “On the Five Regular Bodies”, written and illustrated some time after 1482, follows Plato and Pythagoras in dealing with the notion of perfect proportions. “On the Abacus” is a pamphlet on applied mathematics.
Piero made his will in 1487 and he died five years later, on 12 October 1492, in his own house in San Sepolcro.
In a Sansepolcro church Piero was baptised and he was a member of Sansepolcro’s pious confraternity of St. Bartholomew.
The vigorous volume of the figures, the spatial definition, and, above all, the very original use of colour and light — Piero's paintings appear almost “bleached” — define a style that has all the elements of the Renaissance but that remained one of the most original of all times.
Piero della Francesca had never been married and had no children.
