Piero della Francesca
1418- 1492
Italian Renaissance Painter
Artistically and stylistically influenced by the following painters;- Simone Martini, Giotto Bondone, Paolo Veneziano, Taddeo di Bartolo, Andrea del Verrocchio and Donatello
One of the Greatest Painters Of All Time
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Piero della Francesca was born in the little town of Borgo San Sepolco, in 1420. While artists who labored in the midst of densely populated and closely built cities were accustomed, with sharp eye, to observe things from near by, Piero, standing on a hill of his native town, saw only light and space. He saw the sun as it brooded over the valley and bathed objects, now in the splendor of the morning, now in the quivering light of noon, now in soft twilight. Narrowed by no limit, his eye swept over numberless hills into infinite space. The two problems of space and light, therefore, became the great objects of his life.
The psychological aspect of Piero della Francesca work is no less remarkable than technical. In representing the History of the Holy Cross, he actually gives the history of the Tree of Life which Seth, the son of Adam, planted; the history of the tree trunk, the wood of which served as a bridge, then as the threshold of the Temple, which lat at the bottom of the sea, then in the depths of the earth; and which, although the Nazarene was crucified upon it, still preserves its indestructible power.
Piero della Francesca, exhibits his mathematical fascinations and exercise in perspective drawing through his min career paintings. His later works are only further paradigms of his principles. A flaring daylight lies over the Baptism of Christ. The body of Christ is not flesh colored, but the light falling through the treetops plays upon the skin wit greenish reflections. The figures do not stand in front of the landscape, but grow out of it as mighty as statues. The trees meeting above the scene are pomegranates, the symbol of fertility. As angles, the fresh, saucy maidens of the Birth if Christ, with green wreaths and red and white roses in there fair hair, have returned.
In Madonna de Sinigaflia he attempts the favorite problem of Pieter de Hooch in showing light from a window, flooding into a room, vibrates more dimly in one place and more brightly in another. The love of still-life revealed in this painting led him to paint pictures without figures, representing wide squares enlivened by festive Renaissance buildings; and thus architectural painting taking its place in Italian art. It is true that these last works a yellowish-green mist has taken the place of the clear, bright colors he had formerly loved. It indicated his disease of the eye - a strange irony of fate that the man who had seen so much light was finally blinded. --Richard Muther, The History of Modern Painting, Henry and Co., London, 1896
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References:
Richard Muther, The History of
Painting, Henry and Co., London, 1896
Thomas Krienckle, The Historical Writings of the Renaissance,
Billinger Publishing, 1832
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