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Piero
della Francesca (c. 1415[1] – October 12, 1492)
was an Italian artist of the Early Renaissance. To
contemporaries, he was known as a mathematician and
geometer as well as an artist, though now he is chiefly
appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized
by its serene humanism and its use of geometric forms,
particularly in relation to perspective and foreshortening.
Most of his work was produced in the Tuscan town of
Arezzo.
Piero was born in the village of Borgo Santo Sepolcro,
Tuscany (where he also died), to Benedetto de' Franceschi,
a tradesman, and Romana di Perino da Monterchi, belonging
to the small nobility of Tuscany, as part of Florentine
and Tuscan Franceschi noble family.
He may have learned his trade from one of several
Sienese artists working in San Sepolcro during his
youth. It is known that Piero apprenticed in Florence
with Domenico Veneziano, with whom he worked in 1439
on frescoes for the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova
(church of Sant'Egidio, now lost). He also knew Fra'
Angelico, who introduced him to the other leading
masters of the time, Masaccio and Brunelleschi.
In 1442 he returned to San Sepolcro where, three years
later, he received the commission for altarpiece of
the church of the Misericordia (including the Madonna
della Misericordia), which he was to complete only
in the early 1460s. In 1449 he executed several frescoes
in the Castello Estense and the church of Sant'Andrea
of Ferrara, 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 Sigismondo
Pandolfo Malatesta. In this sojourn he executed the
famous fresco of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta Praying
in Front of St. Sigismund as well as the portrait
of the condottiero. There he also met another famous
Renaissance mathematician and architect, Leon Battista
Alberti. Later he moved to Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna.
n 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 1452-1456.
His 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 Varazze
(Jacopo da Varagine) of the mid 13th century.
In 1453, he returned to San Sepolcro where, the following
year, he signed a contract for the polyptych in the
church of Sant'Agostino. A few years later, summoned
by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome: here 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, for frescoes in Vatican
Palace which have also been destroyed. To this period
belongs The Flagellation (c. 1460), one of the most
famous and controversial pictures of the early Renaissance.
As discussed in 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
at right forefront. Other notable works of Piero della
Francesca's maturity include the Baptism of Fire,
the Resurrection and the Madonna del parto. At Urbino,
where he was in the service of Federico II da Montefeltro,
he met Melozzo da Forlì and Luca Pacioli. Here
he painted the famous double portrait of Federico
and his wife Battista Sforza, now in the Uffizi, as
well as the Madonna of Senigallia and the Nativity.
His portraits in profile take their inspiration from
Roman coins.
Piero della Francesca is documented in Rimini in 1482.
His will was made in 1487. In his later years, painters
such as Perugino and Luca Signorelli frequently visited
his workshop. According to Vasari, he went blind in
old age.
He died at Sansepolcro, on the very day that Christopher
Columbus made his first landfall in the Americas.
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Piero della Francesca - Federigo da Montefeltro
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