Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca (c. 1415 – 12 October 1492) was an Italian painter, mathematician, and geometer of the Early Renaissance, now best known for his art. His work is marked by calm humanism and a strong emphasis on geometric forms and perspective. His most celebrated piece is the fresco cycle *The History of the True Cross* in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo, Tuscany.

Born Piero di Benedetto in the town of Borgo Santo Sepolcro (modern-day Tuscany), his father, Benedetto de' Franceschi, a tradesman, died before his birth. His mother, Romana di Perino da Monterchi, came from the Florentine and Tuscan Franceschi noble family. Because of her marriage into the Franceschi family, she was called "la Francesca," and Piero took the name della Francesca from her. Romana supported his education in mathematics and art. He likely apprenticed with local painter Antonio di Giovanni d'Anghiari, as records show he worked with him in 1432 and May 1438. He also absorbed the work of Sienese artists active in San Sepolcro, like Sassetta. In 1439, he and Domenico Veneziano received payment for frescoes in Florence’s church of Sant'Egidio, now lost. In Florence, he would have encountered leading masters such as Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello, and Brunelleschi. Masaccio’s classicism and majestic figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were a key inspiration. Dating his undocumented work is tricky because his style shows little change over time.

Piero returned to his hometown in 1442 and was elected to the City Council of Sansepolcro. Three years later, he got his first commission: the *Madonna della Misericordia* altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, finished in the early 1460s. In 1449, he painted frescoes in Ferrara at the Castello Estense and the church of Sant’Andrea, also lost. His influence later appeared in Cosimo Tura’s allegorical works. *The Baptism of Christ* (now in London’s National Gallery) was completed around 1450 for the high altar of the Priory of S. Giovanni Battista in Sansepolcro. Other notable works include the frescoes *The Resurrection* in Sansepolcro and *Madonna del parto* in Monterchi.

In 1451, he was in Rimini working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, painting the fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, plus a portrait of Sigismondo. There, he may have met the mathematician and architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had redesigned the Tempio Malatestiano (though Alberti directed the work by correspondence). He then worked in Ancona, Pesaro, and Bologna. In 1454, he signed a contract for the *Polyptych of Saint Augustine* in Sansepolcro; its central panel is lost, and the four wing panels, showing saints, are now scattered worldwide. Called by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome and painted frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments survive. Two years later, he painted frescoes in the Vatican Palace, now destroyed.

In 1452, Piero was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo on the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco, finishing in 1464. The *History of the True Cross* cycle is considered one of his masterpieces and a high point of Renaissance painting. The story comes from medieval legends about the discovery of timber relics of the True Cross, collected in the *Golden Legend* by Jacopo da Varazze.

Giovanni Santi invited Piero to Urbino, where he did several works for Duke Federico da Montefeltro. *The Flagellation* (c. 1455–1470) is often seen as his oldest Urbino piece and is famous for its geometric sobriety and the puzzling nature of the three men in the foreground. Another well-known Urbino work is the *Double Portrait* of Federico and his wife Battista Sforza (in the Uffizi), inspired by large bronze medals and stucco roundels. Other Urbino paintings include the *Montefeltro Altarpiece* (1474, now in Milan’s Brera Gallery) and the *Madonna of Senigallia*. In Urbino, he met painters Melozzo da Forlì, Fra Carnevale, and the Flemish Justus van Gent, mathematician Fra Luca Pacioli, architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini, and likely Alberti again.

In his later years, painters like Perugino and Luca Signorelli often visited his workshop. He finished the treatise *On Perspective in Painting* between the mid-1470s and 1480s. By 1480, his eyesight began to fail, but he kept writing, producing *Short Book on the Five Regular Solids* in 1485.