The role of design (disegno) is fundamental to understanding the working practice of Piero della Francesca. While none of his works on paper survive, research conducted in the past decade by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and the Sherman Fairchild Paintings Conservation Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has revealed Piero’s obsessive working and reworking of compositions. Disegno, in the period sense of the term, was also a problem-solving tool, a catalyst for invention, and an effective means of communication.
Problems raised by Piero’s earliest known work, the Baptism (National Gallery, London) which was part of the San Giovanni d’Afra triptych (Museo Civico, Sansepolcro), introduce the practical and conceptual implications of Piero’s approach to disegno and will serve to open this conference. The following sessions will be dedicated to the composition of his frescoes, the role of underdrawings in his paintings, the use of geometrical figures in his mathematical treatises, and the transmission of his style.
KEYNOTE LECTURE: Piero della Francesca: A Life of Design and Proportion
This lecture will be an examination of Piero’s life and disegno. I use the Italian word here because it can be translated into English as ‘drawing’ or design’, and I shall discuss both. It is frequently stated that not one drawing or cartoon on paper from the hand of Piero della Francesca has survived. That is accurate if we intend to convey the idea that Piero has left no separate sheet of graphic representation that would be preparatory for one of his paintings or a drawing that would stand by itself as an exemplary or valuable object. But there are other drawings of Piero, 95% of them not at all related to any particular painting. In fact nearly a thousand of them exist. These examples of Piero’s drawing practices have largely escaped systematic examination and analysis. They are found in manuscripts of his treatise De prospectiva pingendi, his copy of the Works of Archimedes, and in his two manuscripts on mathematics and geometry, the Treatise on Abaco and the Little Book on the Five Regular Bodies.
From Piero’s earliest masterpiece of The Baptism of Christ and from the earliest of his treatises, Treatise on Abaco, to his latest painting of The Nativity and his last treatise on the regular bodies, his most salient design element is his love of proportion. A painter wishing to represent space and the objects in it as they appear to the eye was working out proportional relationships. Piero became the Renaissance expert in this form of perspective. In his two mathematical treatises, Piero often proved geometrical propositions by setting up proportional relationships. In the Treatise and the Little Book Piero also discussed the five regular bodies. The Greeks had discovered that there were only five polyhedra or solid shapes, each of which has identical sides and angles. In his Timaeus Plato stated that these five regular bodies were the building blocks of creation. Given Piero’s discussions of these regular bodies and the apparent harmonic or regularized nature of the space that he so earnestly constructed in his paintings, can we, should we, see Piero as a Platonist?
James R. Banker is Professor Emeritus of Italian history at North Carolina State University, and lives for most of the year in Florence and Sansepolcro. An expert on the life and works of Piero della Francesca and Sassetta, two artists closely associated with San Sepolcro, his research has emphasized the role of lay religion in the lives of early Renaissance Italians, and the role of patrons, lay and clerical, in the paintings of both Sassetta and Piero. Author of numerous articles on Renaissance themes, his books include Death in the Community: Memorialization and Confraternities in an Italian Commune and The Culture of San Sepolcro During the Youth of Piero della Francesca (2003). His most recent books are both dedicated to Piero della Francesca: Piero della Francesca: Artist and Man (2014) and Documenti fondamentalli per la conoscenza della vita e dell’arte di Piero della Francesca (2013).
Fri 25 Jun, 2021-Sat 26 Jun, 2021
The role of design (disegno) is fundamental to understanding the working practice of Piero della Francesca. While none of his works on paper survive, research conducted in the past decade by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure and the Sherman Fairchild Paintings Conservation Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has revealed Piero’s obsessive working and reworking of compositions. Disegno, in the period sense of the term, was also a problem-solving tool, a catalyst for invention, and an effective means of communication.
Problems raised by Piero’s earliest known work, the Baptism (National Gallery, London) which was part of the San Giovanni d’Afra triptych (Museo Civico, Sansepolcro), introduce the practical and conceptual implications of Piero’s approach to disegno and will serve to open this conference. The following sessions will be dedicated to the composition of his frescoes, the role of underdrawings in his paintings, the use of geometrical figures in his mathematical treatises, and the transmission of his style.
KEYNOTE LECTURE: Piero della Francesca: A Life of Design and Proportion
This lecture will be an examination of Piero’s life and disegno. I use the Italian word here because it can be translated into English as ‘drawing’ or design’, and I shall discuss both. It is frequently stated that not one drawing or cartoon on paper from the hand of Piero della Francesca has survived. That is accurate if we intend to convey the idea that Piero has left no separate sheet of graphic representation that would be preparatory for one of his paintings or a drawing that would stand by itself as an exemplary or valuable object. But there are other drawings of Piero, 95% of them not at all related to any particular painting. In fact nearly a thousand of them exist. These examples of Piero’s drawing practices have largely escaped systematic examination and analysis. They are found in manuscripts of his treatise De prospectiva pingendi, his copy of the Works of Archimedes, and in his two manuscripts on mathematics and geometry, the Treatise on Abaco and the Little Book on the Five Regular Bodies.
From Piero’s earliest masterpiece of The Baptism of Christ and from the earliest of his treatises, Treatise on Abaco, to his latest painting of The Nativity and his last treatise on the regular bodies, his most salient design element is his love of proportion. A painter wishing to represent space and the objects in it as they appear to the eye was working out proportional relationships. Piero became the Renaissance expert in this form of perspective. In his two mathematical treatises, Piero often proved geometrical propositions by setting up proportional relationships. In the Treatise and the Little Book Piero also discussed the five regular bodies. The Greeks had discovered that there were only five polyhedra or solid shapes, each of which has identical sides and angles. In his Timaeus Plato stated that these five regular bodies were the building blocks of creation. Given Piero’s discussions of these regular bodies and the apparent harmonic or regularized nature of the space that he so earnestly constructed in his paintings, can we, should we, see Piero as a Platonist?
James R. Banker is Professor Emeritus of Italian history at North Carolina State University, and lives for most of the year in Florence and Sansepolcro. An expert on the life and works of Piero della Francesca and Sassetta, two artists closely associated with San Sepolcro, his research has emphasized the role of lay religion in the lives of early Renaissance Italians, and the role of patrons, lay and clerical, in the paintings of both Sassetta and Piero. Author of numerous articles on Renaissance themes, his books include Death in the Community: Memorialization and Confraternities in an Italian Commune and The Culture of San Sepolcro During the Youth of Piero della Francesca (2003). His most recent books are both dedicated to Piero della Francesca: Piero della Francesca: Artist and Man (2014) and Documenti fondamentalli per la conoscenza della vita e dell’arte di Piero della Francesca (2013).