_Piero della Francesca_ (Umbrian: about 1416-1492).
This great Umbrian master was a native of Borgo San Sepolcro in
Umbria, but studied in Florence, where it is probable that he
was a pupil of Paolo Uccello (see 583). A combination of the
characteristics of the two schools is to be seen in the work
of Piero, who had at the same time a marked individuality of
his own. "He has the imaginative impulse, the Umbrian sense
of an inner, an almost mystic beauty, of a certain aloofness
from earth and uplifting of the soaring spirit; and yet on
the other side of his character he is strongly scientific; he
studies perspective, the projection of shadows, the scheme
of values; he fills his work with light and atmosphere,
and improves on the oil methods of the earlier Florentines"
(Brinton's _Renaissance in Italian Art_, iii. 85). "By dignity
of portraiture, by loftiness of style, and by a certain
poetical solemnity of imagination he raised himself above the
level of the mass of his contemporaries. Those who have once
seen his fresco of the 'Resurrection' at Borgo San Sepolcro
[in the Pinacoteca] will never forget the deep impression
of solitude and aloofness from all earthly things produced
by it" (Symonds, iii. 170). A copy of this fresco may be
seen in the Arundel Society's collection. The picture now
before us also well illustrates the skill in dealing with
technical difficulties and the solemn grandeur of conception
which characterise the painter. Piero della Francesca was
so called after his mother,[162] "Francesca's Peter," for,
says Vasari, "he had been brought up solely by herself, who
furthermore assisted him in the attainment of that learning
to which his good fortune had destined him." He received at
first a scientific education, and possessed, adds Vasari, "a
considerable knowledge of Euclid, inasmuch that he understood
all the most important properties of rectilinear bodies better
than any other geometrician." In a treatise on perspective,
written in the vulgar tongue, he reduced the science to "rules
which have hardly admitted of subsequent improvement." These
studies influenced Piero's tendencies in art. "The laws of
aerial perspective, of the harmony of colours, the proportions
of light and shade, and the position of objects in space were
equally developed by one whose feeling for precise calculation
went _pari passu_ with that of pictorial representation.
In this combination of science and art he was strictly the
precursor of Leonardo da Vinci. Fra Luca Paccioli, a celebrated
mathematician, and an intimate friend of Piero, was in later
years in constant communication with Leonardo" (Layard, i.
215). Piero probably acquired the new method of oil painting
from Domenico Veneziano (see 766), whom he assisted in some
wall paintings in S. Maria Nuova in Florence in 1439, and with
whom he afterwards worked at Loreto. Some of his best works
are to be seen in his native city, and at Arezzo he painted a
remarkable series of frescoes for the church of S. Francesco.
Piero was also employed at Urbino, where he appears to have
been the guest of Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. He worked
also in Rimini and Ferrara, and was called to Rome to paint two
frescoes in the Vatican, which were afterwards destroyed to
make room for the works of Raphael. His later, like his earlier
years, were devoted to mathematical studies, and in his old
age "the ban Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb
And pencil from his finger." Among his pupils Vasari mentions
Perugino and Signorelli.
A picture of great interest from a technical point of view, as showing
an advancing skill, especially in perspective. The feet of Christ
are finely "foreshortened"; the tops of the mountains are correctly
reflected on the surface of the river in the foreground; in the
middle distance there is a foreshortened view of a street leading to
a fortified town, and the anatomy of the figure stripping himself for
baptism is very carefully rendered. This very realistic figure of a
convert strikes a curious note; Piero's paintings are "the working
out of problems before our very eyes." In these technical respects
Piero resembles Paolo Uccello, while there is also a striking affinity
of style between the landscapes of the two painters. "The peculiar
construction of these landscapes, with steep mountains of an uncommon
type, is the more remarkable because they are the starting-point
of all the later achievements in realistic landscape painting"
(Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 16). "The study
of natural phenomena," says Mr. Monkhouse, "is everywhere apparent.
The pomegranate trees are the earliest attempt in the National Gallery
to give what may be called the portrait of a particular tree--the
habit of its growth, the special character of its leafage. The hedge
in Uccello's 'Battle of St. Egidio' is the nearest approach to it. He
has striven to imagine the scene as it actually might have happened.
Sundry worthies, in strange rich costumes, look on from a further
bank. Nothing is 'newer' in the picture than the carefully studied
reflections of their garments in the water. The effect, so beautifully
rendered by Burne-Jones in his picture of 'Venus's Looking-Glass,'
Piero was the first to paint, if not to observe" (_In the National
Gallery_, p. 106).
The subject is the baptism in Jordan. Christ, under the shade of a
pomegranate tree, is being "baptized of John in Jordan; and straightway
coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit
like a dove descending upon him" (Mark i. 9, 10). The spiritual feeling
of the scene is enhanced by the sweet presence of the attendant
angels,--crowned with wreaths of flowers, instead of the nimbus. It is
an old belief that angels watch over men's birth, and so too they are
represented as presiding over the new birth, which is typified by the
rite of baptism. "What solemnity in the bearing of Christ as He permits
John to pour over Him the water of Jordan which is flowing in a shallow
stream at his feet! How modest the deportment of the assistant angels
at His side! How the trees, whose every leaf in the dense foliage is
distinctly outlined, seem even to hush their whispers that nothing may
disturb the nearness of God, who looking down from heaven as out of the
far distance, makes his presence felt" (Grimm's _Life of Raphael_, p.
46). This picture, which seems never to have been finished and shows
the under-painting, was formerly the principal altar-piece of the
Priory of St. John the Baptist at Borgo San Sepolcro.