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alessandro@ciaodarling.com
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Great italians piero della francesca italian italy history Piero Della Francesca Piero Della Francesca (c. 1420-1492), Italian painter whose style was one of the most individual of the early Renaissance. Piero was born in Borgo San Sepolcro, a small city in southern Tuscany, around 1420. He appears to have studied art in Florence, but his career was spent in other cities, among them Rome, Urbino, Ferrara, Rimini, and Arezzo. He was strongly influenced by Masaccio and Domenico Veneziano. His solid, rounded figures are derived from Masaccio, while from Domenico he absorbed a predilection for delicate colours and scenes bathed in cool, clear daylight. To these influences he added an innate sense of order and clarity. He wrote treatises on solid geometry and on perspective, and his works reflect these interests. He conceived of the human figure as a volume in space, and the outlines of his subjects have the grace, abstraction, and precision of geometric drawings. Almost all of Piero's works are religious in nature-primarily altarpieces and church frescoes-although his serene and noble double portrait Federigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (1465, Uffizi, Florence) is one of his most famous works. The undisputed high point of his career was the series of large frescoes Legend of the True Cross, (c. 1452-c. 1465), for the church of San Francesco in Arezzo, in which he presents scenes of astonishing beauty, with silent, stately figures fixed in clear, crystalline space. These frescoes are characterized by broad contrasts-both in subject matter and in treatment-that create a powerful effect of grandeur. Thus, for example, the nudes in Death of Adam are contrasted to the sumptuously attired figures in Solomon and Sheba, the bright daylight of Victory of Constantine with the gloom of Dream of Constantine (one of the first night scenes in Western art). In addition, each fresco is organized in two sections-a square paired with a longer rectangle-which he exploited to create a marked sense of rhythm. Piero's later works show the probable influence of Flemish art, which he assimilated without betraying his own monumental style. In works such as the Sinigallia Madonna (c. 1470, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino), he adapted to his own purposes an attention to detail and a meticulous treatment of still life that were characteristic of Flemish art. Certain aspects of Piero's work were significant for the northern Italian painters Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini, as well as for the later Raphael, but his art was in general too individual and self-contained to influence strongly the mainstream of Florentine art. He died in Borgo San Sepolcro on July 5, 1492. The Legend of the True Cross In 1447 the Bacci family of Arezzo commissioned the Florentine painter Bicci di Lorenzo to decorate the choir of the Basilica of San Francesco By 1452, when Bicci died, he had finished painting only the four "Evangelists" in the great cross-vaulted ceiling of the choir, the "Last Judgment" on the front wall of the arch, and two "Doctors of the Church" on the intrados or inside curve of the arch. It is presumed that Piero della Francesca immediately took up with the work where Bicci had left off. The theme of the cycle is taken from the "Golden Legend" by Jacopo da Varagine, the iconographic source relied on by many Tuscan and Italian painters starting in the 1300s. It has been determined from a notary's document that the work was interrupted in 1458/59 and brought to completion by 1466. The story narrated pictorially in the 12 main episodes represented in the various scenes composing the cycle, begins with the "Death of Adam" in the lunette of the right wall and concludes with "The Exultation of the True Cross" in the lunette on the left wall and "The Annunciation" at the bottom left of the center wall. The chronological execution of the frescoes follows a different order, however, from top to bottom and from left to right, painted from seven different scaffolds over a period of 250 "working days". Madonna del Parto In just seven "working days" (presumably before 1465) Piero della Francesca painted the extraordinary and touching image of the Madonna del Parto, distant as a heavenly vision and yet alive and real in her post-adolescent freshness. The fresco was planned to complete the back wall of the main altar in the 13th century church of Santa Maria di Momentana (formerly Santa Maria in Silvis) in an isolated country village on the slopes of Monterchi. The church was completely destroyed in 1785 after a disastrous earthquake which miraculously left standing only the wall with the fresco. The panting was later detached from the wall and moved to a niche in the main altar of a new church. This chapel was constructed to serve a cemetery that had been established as part of the reforms instituted by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo. In 1889, after more than a century of neglect, the fresco was "rediscovered" as one of Piero's masterpieces. In order to conserve the fresco it was again detached from the wall in 1910 by the restorer Domenico Fiscali and then was again saved from destruction in the earthquake of 1917 that seriously damaged the 18th century cemetery chapel. From 1956 until its restoration in 1992/93 the Madonna del Parto was conserved inside a new chapel built from the remains of the earlier structure. NOTES ON EXECUTION TECHNIQUE AND STATE OF CONSERVATION Technique of execution The fresco fragment from the ancient Palazzo Pretorio, was detached together with the entire painted plaster surface in the second half of the 19th century, and transferred onto a new support made of a metal grate drowned in gesso treated with sizing. The painting appears to have been executed according to the traditional buon fresco, technique, with colors mixed in water and applied to the still wet plaster. Consequently, during the drying phase, the calcium hydrate contained in the malt undergoes a carbonation process and, absorbing the colors, fixes them to the support surface rendering them more resistant to external agents. Only the saint's mantle, painted with azurite, was applied directly to the dried plaster without the usual preparatory red mission. Analysis has revealed at least three days of painting, or three not very large areas of malt that the painter had to paint before the plaster dried completely. In particular, the hands and face show traces left by the carbon tacks used in transferring the drawing to the plaster by means of the dusting.method. The dusting technique, commonly used in all of Piero della Francesca's mural paintings, consisted of making pin holes along the outlines of the full-scale preparatory drawing done on cardboard which, placed over the plaster painting surface, was tamped down with a cloth sac containing carbon powder. The powder, penetrating through the pin holes, left an image on the wall of the composition to be reproduced in the fresco, making the work easier for the artist. It can be observed on the hands of the saint that the under side of the cartoon was placed against the surface so that the paper was not properly smoothed down and left its print on the fresh plaster. In the case of the pastoral staff, on the other hand, it is possible to see the marks left by direct incision. The painter used gold for the halo of Saint Ludovico, composed of a series of luminous rays. State of Conservation The 19th century detachment of the Saint Ludovico was not a completely successful operation, as is demonstrated by the precarious state of conservation of the painting and the numerous deep breaks in the plaster. The present appearance of the fresco is to be attributed, however, to a more recent restoration. It is quite likely that, after the detachment, the missing plaster in the fragment was replaced and the entire fragment then enclosed within a false frame, of which there are a few traces in the lower part of the painting. Later the frame and the plaster replacements were removed and the fresco filled out with neutral zones in preparation for insertion in the current wood frame. The initial diagnostic analyses identified a vinyl resin based superficial fixative that had been applied to the entire painting in order to consolidate the exfoliated paint. Under the fixative the analysis revealed the presence of shellac, used in all likelihood during the detachment operation and not completely removed from the surface during the removal of the protective cloths. Between the two fixatives there are substantial areas of repainting, effected in order to hide the many abrasions and gaps in the paint. Over time these have undergone alteration, provoking a darkening of the original colors. The azurite in the mantle shows numerous abrasions with wide gaps in the pigment, and its current color is the result in large part of previous restorations. Conservation The Idea The Archive Documentation System (S.D.A.) in support of the Project (" A Project for Piero della Francesca") è was created in 1991 at the same time that the official announcement was made that the work of restoration had begun (See, Rome, Monumental complex of San Michele, Press conference "La Leggenda della Vera Croce. L’avvio del restauro. Seconda fase: dopo le indagini i primi interventi conservativi" December 19, 1991). The System is based on a new idea, conceived in 1990, with a triple intent: - activate a permanent observatory of the conditions of the painted surfaces based on the knowledge developed during the preliminary study phase (1985-90), to be further enriched in the restoration and future monitoring phases; - enhance the methodology of restoration by the addition of a reliable cognitive tool that would serve both as a support system and as an "operative arm" with which to meet the complex challenges in the conservation and future valorization of the Piero della Francesca frescoes in Arezzo; - constitute a "permanent documentation center" for future study and diffusion of information regarding the study and conservation of the mural paintings of Piero della Francesca and to construct, with the use of computer technology, an organic data base for the Project and an interactive multimedia system to be hooked up to the international electronic network and available for public consultation. The System is a unified structure for the registration and documentation of all data produced in each disciplinary area of research and intervention, pursuant to the original program of multidisciplinary research previously designed for the earlier phases of the Project. One of the System requirements is the ability to carry out an integrated and organic examination of the documentation through the correlation of data, especially between historical information and the results of the most recent diagnostic studies of the restoration, in order to be able to make a direct contribution to the development of more in-depth information and more advanced operational methods in both the restoration and information fields.