There aren't many works remaining by Piero della Francesca, the artist, mathematician and geometer who lived in (now) Tuscany from 1415 to 1492. Some painted altarpieces, some portraits, and some wonderful frescoes. The best paintings are in galleries outside tuscany. But it was the frescoes I came to see in Arezzo and two nearby hill towns.
Seeing them in the context of buildings in which you stand, you perceive their scale against yours. An older form.than paintings in frames, the frescoes exist without the shiny varnish of canvases or uber smooth surface of wooden panels. They seem more primitive, so more eternal. Where they have remained integral to a building, they seem embedded in place. Meant to be seen from a distance, frescoes are often simpler, with larger forms than finicky small paintings. Because they embed the paint in plaster, they seem fresh.
To my mind, della francesca's religious fresco figures are solid, yet still a tad flat, making them seem modern. They are usually anchored to the ground, not flying in wafty space. Their faces are never soft or humorous, but solemn or serene. They are not in Byzantine rigid poses, but seem to be caught frozen in action. Some are a della Francesca type, others more like portraits. Their dress is contemporary.
Piero della Francesca started his life and career in San Sepolcro, but soon travelled to Florence where he must have met the early renaissance artist Fra Angelico, famous architects, and seen the wonderful Capella Brancacci frescoes by Massaccio who sadly had died very young but not before introducing solid form, naturalism and perspective to painting: thus the start of what we know as the italian renaissance.
Enriched by this experience Della Francesca went back to San Sepolcro where before long ( he was on the council) he was commissioned to paint altarpieces and then murals in the city headquarters.
The major work there is the mysterious even haunting Ressurection ( c 1450 ) where it is said he put a self portrait onto one of the sleeping soldiers.
There are also remains of frescoes of St Julian, and a worried- looking Bishop.
Around this time he also painted a wall in a church in nearby Monterchi - the Madonna del Parto, a powerful and serene image of a pregnant Mary standing in a fur-lined, embroidered tent flanked by two angels. As the fresco was chopped out of the chapel at a later date, it now sits in its own museum. It was a moving experience to see this work, as the only visitors. We learned that ( hidden) symmetry was important to della Francesca - in common with other renaissance thinkers who believed that geometry could explain the natural world. The angels are symmetrical and have opposite coloured clothes.
Later on he painted the apse chapel of the church of San Francesco, in Arezzo, on the theme of the Story of the True Cross, an unbelievable and rather violent 13th century tale from a book The Golden Legend - tracing the cross from the garden of eden to eventual defeat of non christan armies.
Della francesca arranged scenes from.this story in a non linear way across the three levels and 3 walls of the chapel. ( Wikipedia will explain) indicating his main concern was how the spaces of the frescoes( so to speak) would be arranged around the spaces of the chapel. My favourite section is that of the Annunciation, fitted into a corner space. The angel is standing on the ground - not flying in. Mary looks serious. God looks down from.the level above.
Della francesca also wrote books on mathematics and geometry. He was buried, it is assumed, somewhere in a small funeral chapel of the co- cathedral of St John the Evangelist, in San Sepolcro.
