A mathematician as well as an artist, Piero brought to his paintings an austere beauty of form that recalls Greek sculpture. But he was also a great colourist and unrivalled in his handling of light.

Piero's style is highly individual, and its distinctive qualities are very different from those so often admired in the work of 15th-century Italian painters. In place of decorative detail and graceful fancy, he offers geometric harmony and a classical severity that recalls Greek sculpture. It is these features, together with his power to capture the fall of light, and his richly harmonious colouring, that make his work so appealing to modern eyes.

And although he was well immersed in the sophisticated humanist culture of Florence, Urbino and Arezzo, many of his pictures retain an almost primitive power. The Virgin of the Madonna del Par to, the figures of the aged Adam and Eve depicted in The Death of Adam, and the angelic musicians of The Nativity seem to reflect an ideal of humanity that is at once simple and sublime.

Since Piero's own writings are concerned exclusively with the technical and mathematical aspects of paintings, we must turn to the pictures themselves for evidence of his artistic ideals. In many respects his work is fairly conventional. Almost all of it is on religious themes, often depicted within the traditional framework of the altarpiece. He painted both in fresco and on wooden panels, and seems to have come only gradually to the use of oils, which he often employed mixed with the more familiar tempera medium.

His outstanding claim to purely technical originality lies in his mastery of perspective. We can admire this in the architectural detail of such paintings as The Flagellation and the Brera Altarpiece of Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels. The receding floor and ceiling of the loggia in the former, and the marble apse which frames the Madonna in the latter, are painted with formidable precision, heightened by the exact rendering of light and shadow. We know from Piero's theoretical treatises that this was the fruit of rigorous mathematical research.

However, Piero rarely pursued virtuosity for its own sake. In The Resurrection he employs a double perspective, the soldiers before the tomb being seen from below in foreshortening, while the upper part of the picture implies a viewpoint level with Christ's head. But this is more than a display of technical skill. It is a part of the painting's emotional and symbolic meaning, which contrasts the slumbering human world with the miraculous awakening of the risen Christ.

The face and figure of this Christ are a fine example of Piero's rendering of the human body. Although his men and women may sometimes seem inexpressive at first glancy and their bearing almost always seems to be contemplative rather than active, their vitality and nobility are never in doubt. Moreover, besides a magisterial ability to create ideal, heroic figures, Piero showed in his work as a portraitist that he could capture the unique character of an individual sitter. His portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino are among the most unforgettable images of the Renaissance. It is likely that his work in fact contains several portraits which we do not recognize as such. For instance, Vasari tells us that the Bacci family along with other citizens of Arezzo, are shown around the defeated King in The Battle of Heraclius and Chosroes. The riddle of The Flagellation, too, depends for its solution on the identity of the three men in the foreground on the right-hand side of the painting, though we are unlikely ever to know for sure who they were or what they were talking about.

In his work as a whole, however, Piero's gifts as a portraitist are less central than his power to suggest something more archetypal and timeless in the human form. The fair-haired young man of The Flagellation and the angels of The Baptism of Christ and The Nativity all share a serenity reminiscent of Greek sculpture. We know that Piero, like other Renaissance artists, used models hung with soft cloth to study how drapery fell and how the light caught it. And we might point to some particular feature the feet, for instance, whose firm grip on the ground is so convincing in all these cases as the secret of Piero's craft. But such details of technique or style cannot in themselves explain the underlying vision that the painter has so memorably realized.

Another aspect of that vision, and the one which perhaps gives us the most immediate and intense pleasure, is the harmony of Piero's colours. Despite the damage they have suffered, the Arezzo frescoes never fail to strike visitors with their luminous freshness. This quality is seen at its best in Constantine's Victory over Maxentius where Piero's restricted palette achieves a richly symphonic effect. The same harmony unites the colours of the garments in Flagellation, and brings together the two angels in the Madonna del Parto, whose attitudes and clothing echo one another in a heraldic mirror-image.

Still more characteristic of Piero is the sense of airy space created by the light that fills his skies and falls upon his landscapes. Here, he largely dispenses with perspective, using pure colour in a way that anticipates the Impressionists. In The Nativity, his angelic and human figures are boldly grouped against a countryside receding far into the distance. The same effect is even more daringly successful in the Uffizi diptych, where no middle ground intervenes between the profiles of Federigo and Battista and the idealized landscape of their dominions. This land appears far below and behind them and is bathed in the clear, bright light of the Italian sky.

The formal unity of this enigmatic masterpiece is achieved by consummate skill in perspective, reinforced by the harmonious grouping of the figures. But its two scenes are entirely separate. Piero has emphasized this by illuminating Christ from a light-source behind the right-hand flagellator's arm, while the foreground is lit from the left. The painting challenges the viewer to find some significant connection between the scenes. Christ's suffering must have some allegorical or symbolic meaning, but how is this related to the conversation in the foreground? Many scholars now reject the local tradition identifying the foreground group as Urbino courtiers. Instead, they see the picture as a commentary on the tribulations of the Eastern Christians at Turkish hands, an interpretation borne out by the Oriental turban worn by the man with his back to us. The three men conversing might then be ecclesiastical and political dignitaries, the bearded man perhaps representing the Greek Church. But in the absence of any documentary evidence, we can only speculate on the picture's meaning, while continuing to marvel at the intricate detail and overall harmony of its composition.

Writer – Marshall Cavendish

Standing out as a fine example of Renaissance civilization, the magnificent court of Urbino was a cultural magnet, attracting artists, craftsmen, intellectuals and those in search of knowledge.

Federigo da Montefeltro (1422-82) was the last of the great condottieri, that breed of professional soldiers who sold their skills to warring states. By all accounts he was an unusually gifted man who became ruler of Urbino by popular demand after the murder of his half brother, Oddantonio. His reputation as a trustworthy general made him increasingly sought after, and enabled him to charge high fees for his services. And the income from these military campaigns provided the funds for Federigo's greatest achievement, the Ducal Palace of Urbino, in which he assembled a court that became a scintillating example of Renaissance civilization.

As the Duke, Federigo himself set the standard for court life. He had been given the all round education of character, mind and body offered by the famed Vittorino da Feltre, and attempted in his own life to combine the virtuous man of action with the intellectual. He had the typical Renaissance characteristics the need for display, self-expression and prestige and he channelled these aspects of his personality into the public life of the court; personally, he maintained a sober and ordered existence.

Federigo was a deeply religious man. But his was not a narrow belief rather it was a broad understanding, in keeping with the inquiring spirit of the age. And the all-embracing nature of his mind is indicated by the plans he made for various temples to be built within the court. One was to be dedicated to the Christian divinity, another to poetry and humanity, a third to nature triumphant. This seeming paganism, far from threatening his Christianity, reinforced it.

Constantly in search of knowledge, Federigo encouraged speculation. He studied philosophy and practiced Latin and Greek. One biographer praised him for his skill in geometry and arithmetic, claiming that the Duke made a point of acquiring some new piece of knowledge every day. Meanwhile his artistic patronage also represented power, and reflected his military success. In 1465 Federigo was appointed Captain of the Papal armies, and in some of the disputes between rival city states it was he who held the balance of power. Consequently, it was as much from self-protection as from profit that he took employment against the Malatesta family of Rimini and then later allied with them against Papal greed.

Castiglione in his famous Book of the Courtier described Federigo as 'the light of Italy'. Certainly for later generations this book put Urbino on the map, as the ideal city state whose inhabitants pursued the most refined code of manners available. Undoubtedly, the women of the court were a greatly civilizing presence. Two in particular, Federigo's wife, Battista Sforza, and his daughter-in-law, Elisabetta Gonzaga, enjoyed a reputation for possessing formidable intelligence and personality. Customs were changing: greater respect was paid to the opinions of women, especially when the Duchess proved so capable of governing in the Duke's absence on campaign.

Details of everyday life at the court of Urbino are few. Federigo's reign was described in several chronicles, but the writers pay most attention to his military exploits. Some interesting figures were recorded, however, which gave an indication of the royal scale of life in the palace. There were some 500 people at the court and this figure included 200 servants, five 'readers aloud' at meals, and a man whose job was to look after the pet giraffe.

The Book of the Courtier portrays the ideal lifestyle for the ideal courtier, with the right mixture of physical pursuits, such as hunting or tennis, and the mental delights of brilliant discussions and intellectual games. In some ways it is a political book, justifying the new profession of courtier as the natural Renaissance successor to the medieval knight. Here is the notion of the universal man warrior and scholar, Christian believer and classical hero, the product of an integrated and disciplined education. But Castiglione is deliberately idealizing: the real Urbino, which remained somewhat provincial despite the Montefeltro influence, and the inevitable crudeness of early 16th-century court life are fictionalized into perfection. Yet of all the city states Urbino came closest to the ideal. In comparison to a contemporary ruler like Sigismondo Malatesta, whom Pope Pius II denounced for practising incest and barbaric cruelty, Duke Federigo was conspicuously civilized. The court reflected the man, and its fame spread.

Federigo wanted an architectural monument to give expression to both his power and taste. Believing as he did that architecture was the greatest of the arts, and of primary importance in moulding social patterns and ethics, great care, therefore, was taken in the design of the Palace. And its success can be measured by the way the court inspired not only established intellects but also the young. Urbino became an educational centre to which wealthy Italian and even foreign families sent their children. At least two important figures of the later Renaissance were stimulated by these cultured surroundings: both Raphael and Bramante were brought up in and around Urbino. Tradition has it that Bramante studied perspective under Piero della Francesca; certainly Bramante's own architecture was influenced by the design of the Ducal Palace. And Raphael's father was Duke Federigo's chronicler and court poet: the court connections were well-established.

Federigo and even Piero probably had a hand in the design of the Ducal Palace, but the two principal architects were the little-known Luciano Laurana, and his successor the Sienese, Francesco di Giorgio. Numbers of anonymous craftsmen came from all over Italy, while individual masters like Ambrogio da Milano and Domenico Rosselli of Pistoia were engaged for the more important ornamental carvings. This creative ferment also attracted many painters, among who was Melozzo da Forli and the Spanish court painter Pedro Berruguete, who worked on palace decorations.

Flemish influence was relatively strong at Urbino and was reflected in Federigo's musical tastes and in the number of Flemish intellectuals and textile artisans who visited the court. Prominent Italians were also attracted: conversation, for example, between Piero and Alberti or the painter Mantegna, presided over by Federigo himself, promised a rare level of intellectual stimulation. Federigo built up an unsurpassed library, with the help of the Florentine Vespasiano da Bisticci and a number of writers (including Piero, in his book on perspective in painting) dedicated works to the Duke of Urbino. Indeed the court was the ideal intellectual context for an artist like Piero, whose mathematical investigations to some extent a theoretical search for universal principles, and explanation of life were very much the concern of that universal man, the Renaissance courtier.

Writer – Marshall Cavendish

As the Ottoman Turks drove remorselessly into Europe, Piero's patron, the humanist Pope Pius II, appealed to little effect, for a crusade to save Christendom. Meanwhile the sovereigns of Europe remained absorbed in chivalric dreams and their inevitable dynastic struggles.

In 1458 Aeneas Silvius, the former poet, humanist, and diplomat, was elected to the papal chair as Pius II. Though determined to steer his own course and renounce his earlier frivolities, the new pontiff was still sufficiently a man of the Renaissance to order Piero della Francesca to Rome to decorate his apartments. The artist was paid 150 florins 'for his share of the work on paintings carried out on his Holiness' bedroom'.

Pius took his new role extremely seriously. In 1460 he issued the papal bull Execrabilis which condemned as heretical all those who felt that they could legitimately appeal to a general council over the head of the pope. Papal authority was to remain supreme in all church matters.

Pius was also obsessed with the dream of rallying Christendom under the papal banner to a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. In a century and a half this small Islamic group had become the most powerful political force in the Near East. Only seven years before, they had conquered Constantinople, and brought the 1000-year-old Byzantine Empire to an end. In 1460 they captured the Morea (the great peninsula that constitutes Southern Greece), and murdered the last duke of Athens, Franco Acciajuoli. The Turks were now poised for European conquest.

The Pope had convened the Council of Mantua in June 1459, to which were summoned the secular princes of Europe, in order to discuss plans for mobilization against the Turkish menace.

Many absented while others made flowery but evasive speeches. By February 1460 the disillusioned Pope had dissolved the congress. Only the maritime commercial republic of Venice was willing to fight but then Venice ruled extensive territories in the Aegean.

During this year the Venetians equipped their famous Arsenal with new doors, crowned by the Lion of St Mark, the symbol of the city, but the book the lion carried usually open, and inscribed 'Peace be with you, Mark was closed. The city of merchants was preparing for war. Four years later Pius II died, on the brink of leading the Crusade he had dreamed about. Venice was left to conduct a punishing war single-handed against the Turks.

Although the age of the crusades was over, the chivalric Ideal was still alive, enshrined in the romances and ritual of French courtly life. Rene of Anjou, sometimes called 'the last of the troubadours' had by 1460 begun his 'Livre des Tournois', an illuminated book of chivalric ceremonial.

Rene's daughter Margaret had already shown herself to be an Amazon of whom no troubadour could possibly approve. As wife of the weak Henry VI of England - she had emerged as the effective leader of the Lancastrian party in the Wars of the Roses. 1460 was a year of changing fortunes, marked first by the recognition of the Duke of York as Henry's heir, and then by the defeat and death of York by disaffected Lancastrians at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December.

The able and ruthless King of Scotland, James II, decided to take advantage of this chaotic situation. The desirable English stronghold of Roxbrugh in the north was held by the Yorkists with the result that James became a temporary Lancastrian and laid siege to it during the summer of 1460. With the help of artillery, the Scots took and utterly destroyed the Castle but James did not live to see his victory. During a bombardment, while the King was keenly watching this display of modem technology, one of the guns exploded and killed him.

In the long run, Scotland benefited more from events in northern Europe. In March 1460 Christian I of Denmark was recognized as Duke of Holstein and Count of Schleswig. Paying off rival claimants to these titles crippled the Danish exchequer. Thus the Scots eventually collected an unpaid dowry from the Danes in territories instead of cash. In 1472 the Orkney and Shetland islands were formally acceded to the Scottish crown.

Writer – Marshall Cavendish 

Piero Della Francesca Artist life

Piero della Francesca is now perhaps the most revered Italian painter of his period, but his great celebrity is fairly recent. In his own day he was well known as a mathematician and theorist as well as a painter, but by the 17th century he was almost forgotten, and it is only in the 20th century that his severe purity of form and s consummate mastery of light and colour have become fully appreciated. 

The tardiness of Pieros elevation to the pantheon of great artists reflects the restive obscurity of his career. Most of his life was spent in the small town of Borgo san Sepolcro, and although commissions took him to nearby 2: city-states, his work never had the exposure of that of ' many of his great contemporaries. Now, however, his fresco cycle at Arezzo is properly recognized as one of Italy’s greatest art treasures. 

Sansepolcro's Famous Son

Piero spent most of his life in Sansepolcro, the little Tuscan town where he was born; but prestigious commissions took him further afield, to some of the most illustrious Renaissance courts. 

Piero della Francesca was born between 1410 and 1420 in the small town of Borgo san Sepolcro (nowadays known as Sansepolcro), some 40 miles south-east of Florence. His father Benedetto, a tanner and boot maker, is said to have died before the boy was born, and Giorgio Vasari's 16th-century life of Piero tells us that he was brought up by his mother, Romana. She came from nearby Monterchi, where the tiny chapel of the cemetery is decorated with Piero's fresco of the Madonna del Parto (Virgin of Childbirth,). The picture's subject makes it a fitting homage to the artist's mother, who may well have been buried at her birthplace.

LITTLE DOCUMENTATION

We have no record of Piero's early years, and few documents from any period of his life. In 1442, and again in 1467, he was elected a town councilor at Sansepolcro, and over the years he carried out several commissions for paintings there. It was at Sansepolcro that he made his will, and he died there, the town celebrity, in 1492. Piero clearly loved his birthplace, returning there all through his life. Features of the town and its surrounding countryside appear in a number of 1250 

His paintings. But the search for wider artistic experience, and the quest for commissions, took him further afield, to the Papal court at Rome and to the towns and city-states of Florence, Ferrara, Rimini and Urbino. It is in Florence that we first hear of him, working with the painter Domenico Veneziano on the fresco decoration of the church of Sant'Egidio (now destroyed). The record, dated 7 September 1439, does not make it clear whether or not Piero was still learning his trade as Domenico's assistant.

 A young man of Piero's gifts would in any case have found plenty to instruct and excite him in Florence. Having defeated its great rival, Pisa, the city was at the zenith of its power. In the midst of its vivid artistic and intellectual life, Piero absorbed the influence of such painters as Gentile da Fabriano, who worked in the florid International Gothic style, and Masolino and Masaccio, whose frescoes must have impressed Piero with their grave monumentality. 

The artist would also have heard excited discussions on the new theories of perspective, set forth in Leon Battista Alberti's treatise on painting, Della Pittura. Piero went on to become a renowned master of perspective to the architect Bramante and writing a work of his own entitled De prospection pingendi (on perspective in paintings)

A BYZANTINE DIGNITARY

 

One public event that took place during his stay in Florence seems to have made a strong impression on Piero. In 1439, John Paleologus, the Byzantine Emperor, arrived in the city from Constantinople. He had travelled to Italy with the dignitaries of the Eastern Church in search of Christian unity against the Turks. At the Council of Florence, agreement between the two Churches was solemnly proclaimed. It was to prove short-lived, and the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 cast a shadow over the mid-century and led to calls for a new Crusade. This theme is later invoked in Piero's Flagellation where the bound figure of Christ can be seen as a symbol of the Eastern Christians who were suffering at Turkish hands.

 In 1439, of course, all this lay in the future. Both the spectacle of the Emperor and his retinue, with their sumptuous and exotic garments, deeply impressed the Florentines. The splendour of Piero's Solomon Receiving the Queen of Sheba part of his great fresco-cycle at Arezzo shows that the memory was still fresh 15 years after the event.

From Florence, Piero returned to his native town, where in 1445 he was given his first recorded commission, for the polyptych known as the Misericordia Altarpiece Only partly by Piero's own hand, this seems to have taken an inordinate time to complete; the final payment for it may have been made as late as 1462. A slow and meticulous worker, Piero was also often called away to work for other patrons.

 Some time before 1450, he visited Ferrara. Although no trace of his work remains, his influence on later Ferrarese art is unmistakable. The court of the d'Este family at Ferrara was de-voted to the crafts of war and hunting, the love of pleasure, the intrigue of dynastic politics, and the pursuit of learning and the arts. Here, Piero would have seen the works of the great Netherlandish painter, Rogier van der Weyden, who had probably stayed at the d'Este court the previous year.

THE TEMPLE OF MALATESTA

Piero was next called to Rimini, where the notorious Sigismondo Malatesta obtained his help in the ambitious redecoration of the Church of San Francesco, known as the Tempio Malatestiano (Temple of Malatesta). Piero's contribution, a 

Fresco showing Malatesta kneeling in veneration of his patron saint, Sigismund, is notable in being his only dated work - inscribed 1451.
  
Piero also worked for Malatesta great rival Federigo da Montefeltro, whose model court at Urbino was a famous centre of humanist learning and the arts. Piero travelled there many times between 1450 and 1480, and his Urbino pictures include two of his best-known works, The Flagellation of Christ and the striking diptych (now in the Uffizi, Florence), which shows Federigo and his wife, Battista Sforza, in profile against a luminous landscape of lightly wooded hills and pale tranquil water In the early 1450s Piero began work on his largest commission, the Arezzo frescoes.

The Bacci family, wealthy merchants of the town, had entrusted the decoration of their chapel in the church of San Francesco to Bicci di Lorenzo, a Florentine painter of the old school. When Bicci died in 1452, before he had begun work on the walls, Piero was called in, and together with his assistants spent most of the next 12 years on the task. In 1459 he visited the Papal court at Rome to decorate the chamber of Pius I (his work, writes By 1466 the Arezzo cycle was complete. Although many important paintings still lay before him, Piero was never to work on so large a scale again. Some critics have suspected a loss of enthusiasm in these later years, but such a picture as the National Gallery Nativity - unquestionably a late work - hardly shows lack of inspiration. 

BLIND IN OLD AGE

Tradition holds that Piero lost his sight in old age. A lantern-maker of Borgo san Sepolcro, Marco di Longaro, told a 16th-century memoirist that as a boy he used to 'lead about by the hand Master Piero Della Francesca, excellent painter, who was blind'. Be that as it may, Piero was able to declare himself 'sound in mind, in intellect and in body' as late as 1487, when he wrote his will in his own hand. Unmarried and without children, he left his property to his brothers and their heirs. Five years later, he died, and was buried in the family grave in the Abbey of Sansepolcro. The record of his death can be seen in the Palazzo, now the town museum and art gallery, where his superb painting of the Resurrection  still hangs today: 'M. Pietro di Benedetto de 'Franceschi, famous painter, on 12 October 1492.'

Writer-Marshall Cavendish