( Tuscany, Italy 1416-1492)
His full name was Piero De Benedetto Dei Franceschi. Known by his nickname Piero della Francesca, he was a painter of the Italian Quattrocento.
He was born in Sansepolcro (Tuscany, Italy) in 1416. In 1439, della Francesca was living in Florence. Three years later, in 1442, he is mentioned among the advisors of Borgo San Sepolcro, and in 1445, still in Borgo, the Confraternity of Mercy entrusted him with the polyptych for their own altar, committing him to deliver it in 1448. By 1466, the frescoes of San Francisco were not only completed but were already cited as a glory acquired by the master.
The question of della Francesca's Roman paintings is quite complicated. According to Vasari, the artist painted two stories in the Vatican Rooms, while later, in the Vita of Raphael, only one is mentioned, of which, however, there is no other reference. In 1462, della Francesca's brother, Marco di Benetto, received fifteen shields from the Confraternity of Mercy of Borgo. The stylistic disparities among the various parts of the Borgo polyptych are characteristic of the work.
Piero della Francesca reappears in his homeland in 1467, and he is entrusted with several public positions, while in 1468, he is in Bastia, near Borgo, to escape the plague and to finish the banner of the Nunziata, which is delivered to the confreres of the Company on November 7 of the same year.
Regarding his work, it is likely that the pictorial text to which Piero della Francesca, at the age of twenty, had to resort more frequently while working with Domenico Veneziano, who was finishing the frescoes of the choir of Sant Egidio, was Masaccio's Trinity in Santa Maria Novella. In the Trinity, he saw those architectural and spatial approaches that Leon Battista Alberti was formulating around the same time and that must have seemed to him so exact and rich in derivations towards monumental gravitas that he adopted them warmly from then on, even suggesting some corrections to Domenico about what he was teaching him.
Moreover, the opinion that still persists of a supposed coincidence in Piero of the recondite perspective science of Paolo Uccello is dismissed not only for chronological considerations but also because Piero himself had chosen Domenico as his master and mentor, preferring him over Paolo, and consequently had started in Sant Egidio before San Miniato.
The first work of Piero, the Madonna from the Contini Bonacossi collection, was even created in close proximity to Domenico Veneziano. The piece confirms precise Florentine memories: the landscape is from Domenico transferred to a more accurate measure, to a more exact relationship with the figures; while Domenico already abandons himself to a naturalistic mythology, Piero re-establishes the equivalence according to Masaccio between man and nature, if anything, discharging the active determination of the founder of the lineage into a kind of calm firmness, in the solemnity of rustic ritual.
In the years in Arezzo, Piero finally finds the material space he needed to experiment to the limit of his own measure. When contemplating the walls of Arezzo, even Piero's oldest works, the Baptism and the Flagellation, acquire a deeper metric.
As for the theme of his works, it exists only as a theme of Piero, the courtly realms of the ancients, men and countries, in which the eternal ritual of life unfolded with the quiet certainty of the things that were born with humanity and endure.
His full name was Piero De Benedetto Dei Franceschi. Known by his nickname Piero della Francesca, he was a painter of the Italian Quattrocento.
He was born in Sansepolcro (Tuscany, Italy) in 1416. In 1439, della Francesca was living in Florence. Three years later, in 1442, he is mentioned among the advisors of Borgo San Sepolcro, and in 1445, still in Borgo, the Confraternity of Mercy entrusted him with the polyptych for their own altar, committing him to deliver it in 1448. By 1466, the frescoes of San Francisco were not only completed but were already cited as a glory acquired by the master.
The question of della Francesca's Roman paintings is quite complicated. According to Vasari, the artist painted two stories in the Vatican Rooms, while later, in the Vita of Raphael, only one is mentioned, of which, however, there is no other reference. In 1462, della Francesca's brother, Marco di Benetto, received fifteen shields from the Confraternity of Mercy of Borgo. The stylistic disparities among the various parts of the Borgo polyptych are characteristic of the work.
Piero della Francesca reappears in his homeland in 1467, and he is entrusted with several public positions, while in 1468, he is in Bastia, near Borgo, to escape the plague and to finish the banner of the Nunziata, which is delivered to the confreres of the Company on November 7 of the same year.
Regarding his work, it is likely that the pictorial text to which Piero della Francesca, at the age of twenty, had to resort more frequently while working with Domenico Veneziano, who was finishing the frescoes of the choir of Sant Egidio, was Masaccio's Trinity in Santa Maria Novella. In the Trinity, he saw those architectural and spatial approaches that Leon Battista Alberti was formulating around the same time and that must have seemed to him so exact and rich in derivations towards monumental gravitas that he adopted them warmly from then on, even suggesting some corrections to Domenico about what he was teaching him.
Moreover, the opinion that still persists of a supposed coincidence in Piero of the recondite perspective science of Paolo Uccello is dismissed not only for chronological considerations but also because Piero himself had chosen Domenico as his master and mentor, preferring him over Paolo, and consequently had started in Sant Egidio before San Miniato.
The first work of Piero, the Madonna from the Contini Bonacossi collection, was even created in close proximity to Domenico Veneziano. The piece confirms precise Florentine memories: the landscape is from Domenico transferred to a more accurate measure, to a more exact relationship with the figures; while Domenico already abandons himself to a naturalistic mythology, Piero re-establishes the equivalence according to Masaccio between man and nature, if anything, discharging the active determination of the founder of the lineage into a kind of calm firmness, in the solemnity of rustic ritual.
In the years in Arezzo, Piero finally finds the material space he needed to experiment to the limit of his own measure. When contemplating the walls of Arezzo, even Piero's oldest works, the Baptism and the Flagellation, acquire a deeper metric.
As for the theme of his works, it exists only as a theme of Piero, the courtly realms of the ancients, men and countries, in which the eternal ritual of life unfolded with the quiet certainty of the things that were born with humanity and endure.
