In New York, four personal encounters with Piero della Francesca

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art , thanks to a collaboration with the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice and the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, is hosting an exhibition dedicated to the devotional paintings by Piero della Francesca (“Piero della Francesca. Personal Encounters” Until 30 March, on display in Gallery 624). There are four works on view: “Saint Jerome and a Donor” from the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, “Madonna and Child with two Angels (the Senigallia Madonna)” from the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, “Saint Jerome in a Landscape” from the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and “Madonna and Child” from a private collection in Delaware. By bringing these pieces together for the first time, the show allows to make a step forward in the analysis of this artist, one of the most emblematic personality of the Italian Renaissance.

 

Piero di Benedetto de ‘Franceschi, commonly known as Piero della Francesca (Borgo Sansepolcro, 1412/1417 circa – Borgo Sansepolcro, October 12, 1492) was a member of the second generation of painters-humanists: his works are beautifully suspended between art, geometry and a complex system of multi-level reading, often relating theology, philosophy, and current events of his time. From a conceptual point of view, his production can be regarded as a process that goes from painting practice to applied mathematics and abstract mathematical speculation. His artistic creation is characterized by an extreme rigour of the research into perspective, from the plastic monumentality of the figures to the use of light as a function of expression. But Piero was also the author of mathematical treatises on geometry and perspective: a manual calculation titled “Treaty of the abacus”, the most famous “De prospectiva pingendi” (see for example the picture in the gallery “Projections of a foreshortened head”, not on show) and “Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus”. A further book in which there are copies of some of Archimedes’ works has been identified in the library Riccardiana of Florencea few years ago. The text, with geometric shapes, attests his course of study as well as his interest in mathematics and Greek geometry. When approaching this figure it is thus crucial to bear in mind the strong link between mathematics and painting, which have certainly influenced the career of Piero della Francesca, both ways.

January 31, 2014