Piero della Francesca
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Piero della Francesca | |
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Born | Piero di Benedetto c. 1415[1] |
Died | 12 October 1492 Sansepolcro, Republic of Florence | (aged 76–77)
Nationality | Italian |
Known for | Painting, Fresco |
Notable work | The Baptism of Christ Flagellation of Christ Brera Madonna |
Movement | Early Renaissance |
Piero della Francesca (
Biography
Early years
Piero was born Piero di Benedetto in the town of Borgo Santo Sepolcro,[1][6] modern-day Tuscany, to Benedetto de' Franceschi, a tradesman, and Romana di Perino da Monterchi, members of the Florentine and Tuscan Franceschi noble family. 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 (similar to Lisa Gherardini who was known as "la Gioconda" through her marriage into the Giocondo family). Romana supported his education in mathematics and art.[6]
He was most probably apprenticed to the local painter Antonio di Giovanni d'Anghiari, because in documents about payments it is noted that he was working with Antonio in 1432 and May 1438.
Mature work
Piero returned to his hometown in 1442 and was elected to the City Council of Sansepolcro.
The Baptism of Christ, now in the
Two years later he was in
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
Frescoes in San Francesco at Arezzo
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.[11]
Piero's activity in Urbino
At some point,
Another famous work painted in Urbino is the Double Portrait of Federico and his wife Battista Sforza, in the
In Urbino Piero met the painters Melozzo da Forlì, Fra Carnevale, and the Flemish Justus van Gent, the mathematician Fra Luca Pacioli, the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini, and probably also Leon Battista Alberti.
Later years
In his later years, painters such as
Criticism and interpretation
In a 2013 exhibition, the Frick Collection in New York collected seven of the eight paintings of Piero known to exist in the United States. Of the seven paintings in the exhibit, critic Jerry Saltz writing in New York magazine singled out Piero's Virgin and Child Enthroned With Four Angels for its exemplary qualities.
Saltz wrote, "The Virgin and child are elevated two steps. They are in a world itself apart from this world apart. Mary isn't looking at her child and looks instead at the rose he reaches for. You begin to glean the revelation she is having. The flower represents love, devotion, and beauty. It also symbolizes blood and the crown of thorns Christ will wear. This child who will suffer a horrendous death reaches for his acceptance of fate. Mary does not pull the flower back. You sense an inner agony, noticing her deep-blue robe open to reveal scarlet beneath, symbol of outward passion and pain to come. In the dead-center vertical line of the painting is Christ's right palm that will be nailed to the cross."[17]
By contrast, Walter Kaiser, reviewing the exhibition in The New York Review of Books, wrote, "The most splendid picture in the Frick exhibition is the magnificent figure of Saint Augustine from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, a companion to Saint John the Evangelist [owned by the Frick Collection] on the Sant'Agostino altarpiece".[18]
Work in mathematics and geometry
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Piero's deep interest in the theoretical study of perspective and his contemplative approach to his paintings are apparent in all his work.[19]
In his youth, Piero was trained in mathematics, which most likely was for mercantilism.
In the late 1450s, Piero copied and illustrated the following works of
Inspirations
Piero's geometrical perfection and the almost magic atmosphere of the light in his painting inspired modern painters like Giorgio de Chirico, Massimo Campigli, Felice Casorati, and Balthus.
Selected works
- Polyptych of the Misericordia(1445–62) – Tempera and oil on panel, 273 x 330 cm, Museo Civico Sansepolcro
- National Gallery, London
- St. Jerome in Penitence (c. 1449–51) – Tempera on panel, 51 × 38 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
- St. Jerome and a Donor (Girolamo Amadi) (1451) – Tempera and oil on panel, 49 × 42 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
- Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta Praying in Front of St. Sigismund (1451) – Fresco (transferred to canvas), 257 x 345 cm, Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- The History of the True Cross (c. 1455–66) – Fresco cycle, Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo
- Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino
- Polyptych of Saint Augustine (1460–70) – Tempera and oil on panels, dispersed in several museums
- Resurrection(c. 1463) –Fresco, 225 × 200 cm, Museo Civico Sansepolcro
- Hercules (c. 1465) –Fresco (detached), 151 × 126 cm, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
- St. Mary Magdalene (c. 1466, 1458–70s) – Fresco, 190 × 180 cm, Cathedral, Arezzo
- Madonna del Parto (1459–67) – Detached fresco, 260 × 203 cm, Chapel of the cemetery, Monterchi
- The Nativity (c. 1470) – Oil on panel, 124.5 × 123 cm, National Gallery, London
- Polyptych of Saint Anthony (c. 1470) – Oil on panel, 338 × 230 cm, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia
- Brera Madonna, i.e. Montefeltro Altarpiece, (1472–74) – Oil on panel, 248 × 170 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
- Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
- Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino
References
Footnotes
- ^ According to Giorgio Vasari, Piero worked for Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who was Federico's son. However, in their Oxford World's Classics translation of Vasari, pp. 533-534, Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella write that Guidobaldo "was born too late to have been Piero's first patron, [and] Vasari probably means to allude to Guidantonio da Montefeltro," who was Federico's father. By contrast, Machtelt Brüggen Israëls writes in Piero della Francesca and the Invention of the Artist, p. 43, that Vasari was "possibly intending Federico di Montefeltro".
- regular solids in his own handwriting. Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, however, wrote in 2020 that Piero was blind in his last months.[16]
- ^ Dedicated to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, son and heir of Duke Federico.
Citations
- ^ a b c d Turner, A. Richard (1976). "Piero della Francesca". In William D. Halsey (ed.). Collier's Encyclopedia. Vol. 19. New York: Macmillan Educational Corporation. pp. 40–42.
- ^ "Piero della Francesca". Oxford Dictionaries UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press.[dead link]
- ^ "Piero della Francesca". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ "Piero della Francesca". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
- ^ Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1568.
- ^ a b Durant & Durant 2011, p. 462.
- ^ Banker, James R., The Culture of Sansepolcro during the Youth of Piero della Francesca, The University of Michican Press, 2003, p.159.
- JSTOR /885421.
- ^ a b c Durant & Durant 2011, p. 463.
- ^ The four saints are Saint Augustine, Museu de Arte Antiga, Lisbon; Saint Michael, National Gallery, London; Saint John the Evangelist, Frick Collection, New York; and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan. The paintings are identified and pictured in Cole, Bruce, Piero della Francesca: Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Art, pp. 44-45, and in Pope-Hennessy, John, The Piero della Francesca Trail (2002), pp. 20-21. (Pope-Hennessy believes that the painting of Saint John the Evangelist is probably actually St. Simon, p. 19.)
- ^ a b Durant & Durant 2011, p. 464.
- ^ "The Golden Legend, or Lives of the Saints" Volume Three, retrieved on 22 May 2007.
- ^ Durant & Durant 2011, p. 466.
- ^ Cole, Bruce, Piero della Francesca: Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Art, p. 62.
- ^ a b c Durant & Durant 2011, p. 465.
- ^ Israëls, Machtelt Brüggen, Piero della Francesca and the Invention of the Artist, Reaktion Books, 2020, p. 7.
- ^ Saltz, Jerry, "Saltz on Piero della Francesca at the Frick". New York magazine, March 3, 2013.
- ^ Kaiser, Walter, "The Noble Dreams of Piero", The New York Review of Books, March 21, 2013.
- ISBN 0-300-10342-5.
- ^ "Piero della Francesca". Oxford Art Online.
- ISBN 0-7679-0816-3.
- ^ James Banker, A Manuscript of the Works of Archimedes in the Hand of Piero della Francesca, «Burlington Magazine», CXLVII, March 2005, pp. 165–69.
- ^ "On the Sphere and the Cylinder; On the Measurement of the Circle; On Conoids and Spheroids; On Spirals; On the Equilibrium of Planes; On the Quadrature of the Parabola; The Sand Reckoner". World Digital Library. 1450–1460. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
- ^ Paolo d'Alessandro e Pier Daniele Napolitani, Archimede latino.Iacopo da San Cassiano e il corpus archimedeo alla metà del Quattrocento, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2012.
Sources
- ISBN 9781451647624.
Further reading
- Banker, James R., Piero della Francesca: Artist and Man, Oxford University Press, 2014,
- Berenson, Bernard, Piero della Francesca or The Ineloquent in Art, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954.
- Chieli, Francesca, "La grecità antica e bizantina nell'opera di Piero della Francesca", Firenze, 1993.
- ISBN 978-1-58839-529-0.
- Clark, Kenneth, Piero della Francesca. Phaidon Publishers. First ed. 1951, second ed. 1969.
- ISBN 0-06-430906-1.
- ISBN 0-8047-3442-9.
- ISBN 1-85984-378-6.
- Hendy, Philip, Piero Della Francesca and the Early Renaissance, New York: Macmillan, 1968, and London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.
- Israëls, Machtelt Brüggen, Piero della Francesca and the Invention of the Artist, Reaktion Books, 2020. ISBN 978-1789143218.
- Kaiser, Walter, "The Noble Dreams of Piero", The New York Review of Books, March 21, 2013. Review of Silver, Nathaniel E., Piero della Francesca in America and the exhibition at the Frick Collection that it accompanied.
- Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg, Piero della Francesca: San Francesco, Arezzo, New York: George Braziller, 1994.
- ISBN 978-1558591684.
- ISBN 1-878818-77-5.
- Maetzke, Anna Maria, ed., Piero della Francesca: The Legend of the True Cross in the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo, with Giovanna Melandri, Stefano Casciu, and Carla Corsi. Skira, 2000. ISBN 88-8118-829-5.
- Maetzke, Anna Maria; Bertelli, Carlo, eds., Piero della Francesca: The Legend of the True Cross in the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo, texts by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin et al. Skira, 2001. ISBN 978-8884910233.
- Manescalchi, Roberto, L'Ercole di Piero, tra mito e realtà,(ParteI), Grafica European Center of Fine Art (Terre di Piero), Firenze, 2011. ISBN 978-88-95450-05-6
- Manescalchi, Roberto, "Piero alla corte dei Pichi", in Studi e Documenti Pierfrancescani II, Sansepolcro 2014. ISBN 978-8895450445
- Meiss, Millard, "A Documented Altarpiece by Piero della Francesca", The Art Bulletin, Vol. 23 (March 1941), pp. 53-68; reprinted with alterations and additions in Millard Meiss, The Painter's Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art, Harper and Row, 1976, pp. 82-104.
- ISBN 88-09-01020-5
- Piero's Archimedes, [fac-sim du Codice Riccardiano 106 par Piero della Francesca]; eds. Roberto Manescalchi, Matteo Martelli, James Banker, Giovanna Lazzi, Pierdaniele Napolitani, Riccardo Bellè. Sansepolcro, Grafica European Center of Fine Arts e Vimer Industrie Grafiche Italiane, 2007. 2 vol. (82 ff., XIV-332 pp. English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Arabic). ISBN 978-88-95450-25-4.
- ISBN 1-892145-13-8.
- Rossetti, William Michael (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). p. 930.
- Silver, Nathaniel E., Piero della Francesca in America: From Sansepolcro to the East Coast, with essays by James R. Banker and Machtelt Israëls, and an appendix by Giacomo Guazzini and Elena Squillantini. New York: Frick Collection, 2013. Catalogue for exhibition of the same name listed in "External links".
External links
- Media related to Piero della Francesca at Wikimedia Commons
- "The Art of Piero della Francesco", Lecture by Machtelt Brüggen Israëls at The Frick Collection, November 20, 2019.
- "Piero della Francesca in America", exhibition at The Frick Collection, February 12, 2013 to May 19, 2013.
- "Featured Catalogue—Interview with the Curator: Keith Christiansen", Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 5, 2014.