Piero della Francesca
(b Borgo San Sepolcro [now Sansepolcro], c. 1415; bur
Borgo San Sepolcro, 12 Oct 1492).
Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational,
calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in
which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of
Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci,
Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the
recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional
painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master;
and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked
in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting
technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose
modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene,
memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in
the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing
figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally
attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as
the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an
ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures
that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical
language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating
precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their
perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to
narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of
works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent,
assistant.
