Original subtitles

Good afternoon, we are going to have the opportunity to study the work of Piero della

Francesca in two lectures. Piero is one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance and we will

divide his work, as we did with Masaccio's, into two distinct parts. Piero della Francesca was born

around 1420 in a Tuscan village called Borgo San Sepolcro, which was then one of the or part of one

of the papal states. Despite an apprenticeship in Florence with Domenico Veneziano and travel to

Rome where he painted for Pope Pius II, he spent much of his life working in San Sepolcro, working

in smaller centers like Rimini, Ferrara, Arezzo, and Urbino, and in 1492 he died where he was born,

in San Sepolcro. I ought to mention his name one more time, Piero della Francesca, ending in an A

is unusual, and it indicates that he took his mother's name. His father apparently died when he

was an infant, and instead of adopting his father's name, he uses his mother's. So it is Piero della

Francesca. That's unusual and of interest. The cities that he worked in, that is to say the cities that

were not Florence, where he worked for most of his career, were certainly not negligible. And yet,

because his output, which is large, is not associated with Florence, he was treated by art historians and

cultural historians as a marginal painter until the 20th century. Of course, this just attests to the

Florence-centric attitude of most Renaissance historians, and that's a justifiable bias, and I

share it to some degree, but one that has been re-examined in recent decades, now bringing greater

balance to Renaissance studies. Piero della Francesca typified the Renaissance artist in his profound

exploration of form, of light and color, and especially of space. He wrote a treatise on perspective. Yet he

stands noticeably apart from his compatriots in the inimitable aura of his painting, inimitable and

difficult to describe and explain. For four centuries, his art was considered not merely atypical of the

Quattrocento, but essentially provincial, an oddity appreciated by relatively few people. Today, it is his

apartness that compels our attention, and his special aura has been described as mesmerizing,

otherworldly. His figures, even when portraits, seem not to be merely natives of Tuscany, but of some

timeless place, and they convey an atmosphere, an aura, a grandeur which is supra-human. They have an

inexplicably haunting power. His spatial constructions encompass these grand actors in a comprehensive

visual totality. First of the two lectures on Piero, we'll study some of his many memorable individual

works painted between about 1445 and 1470. These include three of his earliest achievements,

the Madonna del Parto, the baptism of Christ, and the famous Resurrection. You're looking now at the

Madonna del Parto. Parto means birth. The Madonna del Parto, painted about 1445, was and is in Monterqui,

a small town of Monterqui, a small town of Monterqui, outside the town. In fact, it was in a cemetery in a

small chapel. It was the sole work, so an isolated cemetery with a small chapel and a fresco in it of the Madonna del Parto,

painted when he was perhaps 25 around 1445. It's been moved now to a small museum.

Monterqui is midway between Sansepulcro and Arezzo to the south. The subject of the Madonna of Childbirth,

which would be a fair translation of Parto, the subject is not uncommon and yet not one you encounter

daily. This primal, maternal figure is revealed to us as two angels part the curtains of a tent-like

structure. The Madonna also parts her blue outer garment to indicate her pregnancy, the Incarnation.

This figure has an archaic feeling, and yet this archaic figure touches our imagination, not least

because in this place, a graveyard, she announces birth, the Christ child, and rebirth,

birth, salvation. The baptism of Christ, in a much more accessible location today because it's in

London in the National Gallery, was painted about 1450, and it was made for a church in Sansepolcro,

then an abbey church which now is the cathedral, but the painting has long been absent from there and

present in London. It's similar to the Madonna del Parto in composition and mood, but it is infinitely more

subtle, more nuanced. The palette, for one thing, is really lovely. The pearly tones of this palette

are quite comparable to those of Domenico Veneziano, with whom we know Piero worked in Florence in 1439.

Always, Piero focuses on essentials. The anointing of the calm, statuesque Christ in a crisp,

Tuscan landscape. He is echoed by the columnar tree, which anchors and arches over the scene.

The tree is symbolic as well because it recalls the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the

Garden of Eden, and that is intentional because Christ as the new Adam, a common interpretation of

Christ, the new Adam, redeems the fall of mankind. The painting is suffused with the preternatural stillness,

which is the great gift of Piero's art. Part of the secret of that sense of calm derives from the

rational mathematical composition of the painting. For instance, one could divide the painting into two or

three parts, both vertically and horizontally. If you look at it vertically, Christ is in the precise center.

But if you wanted to divide it into three parts, you would use the tree and the figure of the Baptist,

and you'd have essentially three comparable parts of the painting vertically. You can also run a horizontal

line through the heads, dividing the painting virtually in the middle, and there are subdivisions.

In addition to that, he uses circular forms, pure circular forms in the painting that can be perceived

in the design. The biggest, the most important, I suppose, is initiated by the arch. If you follow

the arch around and just allow your eye to continue that circle, it sweeps down right under the elbows of

Christ and up again to the other side of the arch. Everything that's essential is right there within

that circle with the dove of the Holy Spirit in the precise center of the composition. The figure to

the right in the background or mid-ground, a neophyte, as we saw them in Masaccio's baptism scene in the

Brancacci Chapel, preparing for baptism. And this one is quite reminiscent of those two nude male figures in

St. Peter baptizing the neophytes in Masaccio's composition, another very marvelous invention of

the male nude figure. By the way, at the bottom of this, you cannot perceive it in a photograph. You

cannot. You have to be in front of it. But the water, it looks in a photograph as though the water dried

up and that he is standing on dry land and that the water is just behind the feet of Christ and the foot

of the Baptist and is reflecting sky so beautifully. But that's not true. The water is, in fact, in this

area. It's shallower and you're seeing the bed of the stream under it. But when you're in front of it,

you can see the water crossing over the tops of the feet. This is just one more excellent example of why

photographs, as much as we depend on them and love them, simply cannot replace the experience of the

original work of art. Much more to say about this lovely painting, but I will pass on to the famous

and unforgettable painting of the Resurrection, a painting from the late 1450s. It's not dated.

It is where it was painted for, the Town Hall of Borgo San Sepulcro. It's no longer in the same room,

but it's in the same building that it has been since it was painted, what, 550 years ago. The Resurrection

impresses many viewers with the terribly convincing emergence of Christ from the tomb. The foot of Christ,

the left leg, has been lifted up high, very high. The knee is waist high and more,

and the foot on the edge of the tomb. In his right hand, he bears the standard with the cross on it.

And even though this is a still figure, and in one sense a figure which has been stopped in motion,

one feels something inexorable about this. One feels that that foot will, that there will be a press down,

and the figure will rise up. This is not one of those, one of those resurrections in which the body,

through some supernatural force is flying from the tomb, but rather one which certainly, laboriously,

but inexorably rises out of the tomb. And this feeling of awe is increased if you look at those eyes,

the impassive eyes of this revivified Christ. Again, you have to be in front of it, perhaps,

but you can do it in a photograph. If you stare long enough at those eyes, they're deeply disturbing.

They seem, and I don't wish to be too subjective, but they seem to have something of the aura of the

grave in them. They're remarkably, remarkably suggestive. He is symbolically flanked by the dead

of winter. On our left here, a winter landscape, a dead tree, and on our right, the spring trees in leaf.

The passage from winter to spring, the suggestiveness, suggestion of rebirth is clear and strong in this

landscape. In front of the tomb from which he rises are the guards, all unconscious save one. Some are

sleeping, the second from the left. Some, this figure seems almost to be falling. It's a very,

very peculiar, again, when you look at a reproduction. In front of it, because it's very large, it has the

sense of giving a great urgency to that corner of the picture, of kind of setting in motion your eye

as this figure leans almost out of the pictorial space. This figure to the left is quite wonderful and

remarkable. He is awakening. He may even already have looked up and is covering his eyes, or in any

event, he is now rubbing his eyes and his face. It is body language totally. We don't see his face.

It's completely in the matter of body language. Christ is as profoundly classical as any ancient sculpture.

This painting, as I say, was made for the town hall in San Sepulcro where it remains. San Sepulcro means

holy sepulchre. Therefore, the painting is a symbol, as it were, of the name of the town itself. An early

chronicler of the town wrote, and our land of Borgo San Sepulcro was called the New Jerusalem.

I encountered a fascinating quotation or story that I wanted to share briefly with you.

As you know, the war, the Second World War raged through Italy, and one of the greatest concerns

during the war was the preservation of monuments every inch of the way and keeping cities from being

bombed. It was an extraordinary effort that was made, and of course much was saved, but there were things lost as well.

A British artillery officer, a British artillery officer, recounted later that he was in charge of the

bombardment of San Sepulcro. The Germans were thought to be in San Sepulcro, and his job was to

shell it.

And as he was directing the shelling, he kept thinking, San Sepulcro, San Sepulcro, it's so familiar,

why do I know the names, why should I? And yet it's in my mind, it must be something significant.

And after some hours of bombardment, he said, I suddenly knew what it was, that when I was about

18 years old, I had read an essay by Aldous Huxley, in the early 1920s, Huxley wrote about going there,

and how Huxley said the difficulty of going to San Sepulcro was more than made up for by

going to the town hall and standing in front of the greatest painting in the world.

And the officer said, I thought we've been shelling for some time, and I have either destroyed or done

great damage, great damage to the greatest painting in the world, and I ordered a halt to the shelling.

And the next day they entered the town, and there was no, no, no one to oppose them. He asked

for the town hall, he went there directly, he went in the door, the town hall stood,

and the painting was still there. He looked up at the vault and said he knew that one shell would have

brought the vault down and destroyed the greatest painting in the world. He said he felt many times

later that he ought to write Huxley and say that this was a perfect example that the pen was mightier

than the sword. In the 1460s, Piero became closely associated with the nearby city of Urbino,

and its count, later Duke, Federico da Montefeltro. And a number of important works are associated with

Urbino, important works by Piero. Above all, I suppose, the flagellation, painted about 1460,

which is still in Urbino, in the palace, because the palace is now a museum, and the painting is still

there. This painting may have been made for the palace chapel. I'll discuss that in a later lecture

when we return to Urbino, but it may have been painted for the Cappella del Perdona, the chapel of

pardon in the palace. But the meaning of this painting, in which the assumed main subject,

the flagellation of Christ, is relegated to the background on the left-hand side of the painting,

is very puzzling. I should point out that back while I'm in the left-hand side of the painting,

the flagellation is placed to the back where Christ is tied to the column. There is a classical statue,

an ancient Roman statue, a pagan statue placed on top of that column, and the figures surround him.

Seated to the left is Pontius Pilate, watching this event. There is a whole legend about the

house of Pontius Pilate, but I'm not going to introduce it. On the right-hand side, dominating

this picture called the flagellation, are three enigmatic figures in the foreground,

and this has been much debated for forever, it seems. And I'm going to just give you a couple of

the theories. I wouldn't mention the first one because it's not tenable, except the theory, dating

from the early 19th century, held that the painting alluded to the assassination of Odantonio da Montefeltro,

the first ruler of Urbino, the brother of the famous Federico the Duke at this time. That theory won't

hold, but it's still found in popular guidebooks, which is why I bring it up in order to dispose of it.

Later, it was proposed that the scourging of Christ in the background referred to the fall of Constantinople,

the city named for the emperor who legitimized Christianity, the fall to the Muslim armies,

Muslim armies, in 1453. That is not generally given much credence today either, but there are

so many ways to approach the painting. A recent interpretation suggests instead that the painting's

private, almost allegorical message is consolation, that the blonde youth in the foreground, who indeed

seems almost otherworldly, in fact represents two young men who died at about the same time,

and who were the sons of the older men flanking this youth. In this interpretation, the man on the right,

in the elaborate blue and gold robe, is Ludovico Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, whom in fact he strongly

resembles. The bearded figure on the left is identified as Ottaviano Ubaldini, chief counselor

and state treasurer for the Duke of Urbino, who often governed during Federico's absences on military

affairs. Ubaldini was also a renowned astrologer in an age that ranked that calling as a respected science,

and he was a close, lifelong friend of Ludovico Gonzaga. In this interpretation, the conjunction

of the personal commemorations of the loss of their sons with the flagellation of Christ was to emphasize

that glory follows tribulation. And given the presence of this painting in Urbino,

it is assumed that the powerful Ottaviano Ubaldini must have commissioned it. This is clearly the most

unexpected, but also perhaps, when read closely, the most convincing interpretation of this puzzling painting.

At Urbino, he was commissioned by the Duke and Duchess to do their portraits.

Here they are, now today, not there, but in Florence in the Uffizi, mounted in this double frame,

facing each other, the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, a striking pair of pure profile portraits. We haven't

said much about portraiture, but pure profile is the way that most portraits in the Renaissance were done

up until nearly the turn of the century, when the head starts to turn into a three-quarter profile.

One reason, there are two reasons, I suppose, for profile portraits. One, it's easy to achieve a likeness.

Our profiles are very recognizable. The Egyptians knew it, and it hasn't changed, so to use pure profile

profile is a recognizable way of quickly capturing a likeness, an easy way of capturing a recognizable

likeness. The other thing is that they relate to coins and medals, and we're thinking of Roman coins

and medals, but also coins and medals as revived in the Renaissance based on Roman models. Those were

always in profile, and so there is a reference and a borrowing of the power of the Roman past, of the

antique past. The portrait is very important during the Renaissance because of the humanistic tradition

which is born in the Renaissance, so naturally portraiture gains in significance there. The portrait

of the Duchess, on the right, Battista Sforza, suggests a highly intelligent woman, as she was,

of striking self-possession. Her character dominates the understated richness of her costume

and the accessories of the costume. It's handsome, but nothing show-off about it, I think. A wonderful

landscape behind her, a fertile landscape, is shown as though we were on a balcony, looking down,

seeing her, and then the balcony edge which we don't see, and the landscape from the palace scene

behind her on that side. The sense of dominion over the landscape is even stronger in the portrait

of Federico de Montefeltro in that wonderful red coat and hat. This is owed to the extraordinary

architectural dignity of his battered face. The abrupt depression at the top of his nose resulted from a

jousting accident that also cost him his eye. He is always painted in profile. Though he may be ill-favored,

he is unmistakably noble. Nor do we doubt his extraordinary fame as a mercenary soldier whose

success brought him great wealth. I will only show you, so you know that they're there and perhaps

return to them later, the backs of the paintings. On the backs are painted allegorical triumphs of the

couple, in which the duke on a chariot comes in on one side and the duchess on another, again with

landscapes behind and with inscriptions. This has to do with the whole theory of or the whole practice of

recording great men and women during the Renaissance and all of this is an integral part of this of this

painting. A remarkable image, a large altarpiece, once in a church in Urbino, the high altar of the church of

San Bernardino, but it's not certain it was always there. It may have been moved to there sometime from

another site, but certainly painted for somewhere in Urbino, some church in Urbino. It depicts the

Madonna and child with saints, angels, and the duke of Urbino in front of an architectural setting of

great purity and beauty. It must be a late work, but the date is uncertain. We're back here to the subject of a

sacred conversation, a sacra conversazione again, with the saints gathered closely around the Madonna

and child. One remarkable feature of the architecture of the architecture is a huge inverted mollusk shell

here in the apse, as it were, from the tip of which depends a long cord, a long cord with an ostrich egg

at the end. An egg whose perfection of shape seems to appeal to Pierrot's love of pure shapes, but it's

also a symbol. It's a symbol of birth. The egg in general is a symbol of birth and in the Christian

context of rebirth as well, and an ostrich egg became, for reasons I am not sure, specifically to

symbolize the virgin birth. And one further detail of this that I wanted to share with you, it's a

wonderful invention. Here is the duke kneeling before us, again in pure profile, and at his feet,

his helmet, and then his gauntlets are laid so that his hands are bare. But the gauntlets, the way the

gauntlets are laid are almost as though he had prostrated himself, if you follow my meaning here. It's

as though they stand for his arms. They seem to be prostrating themselves in front of the Madonna and

child. He kneels, a line of his arms and hands continues right up into the child. A child, and

we've seen this before, who looks not asleep but dead, so prefiguring the sacrifice of Christ.

The Nativity, a painting now in the National Gallery in London, was painted in the early 1470s.

It's painted in oils in contrast to his usual tempera technique. This suggests that he had studied

recent Netherlandish painting, where oil painting had been developed and was introduced. And it also

gives me an opportunity to appropriately define both of those painting mediums for you at the same time.

Tempera, and I shall try to be clear, tempera is a water-based medium that in the late medieval and

Renaissance period was usually made from egg yolk. It dries very quickly, and it must be applied with

repeated brush strokes, small strokes. When it dries, it is opaque. It has a softly lustrous sheen, and it's hard and

durable. Oil is a medium with some sort of drying oil, unlike olive oil, for instance, an oil which will dry,

such as linseed oil, walnut oil, which was used a lot during the Renaissance. Such drying oils form a solid

film when exposed to the air for a long enough time. Because they dry slowly, they can be applied evenly

over a wide surface. The color bound in the oil has a richness and a luminosity that comes from the

translucency of the medium. In the late 15th century, tempera and oil are often combined in the same

painting. By the 16th century, oil was the predominant medium. It should really be called, I'm back to the

painting, and from the away from the definitions. This painting, a nativity, should really be called an

adoration of the Christ child. The same subject we saw in Fra Filippo Lippi's art. It stresses the

humility of the Virgin Mary, who adores the Christ child, who lies on a cloth on the on the ground in

front of her. Musical angels standing in a little choir to the left. They're really the more somber cousins of

Luca della Robbia's marble choir boys, and they sing and play to the newborn child. An unusually relaxed

Joseph, over on the right hand side here, shows the sole of his foot. He's crossed his right leg over

his left knee, and he shows the sole of his foot to us as he talks to the shepherds. Quite remarkable

pose. All of this in front of a strikingly rude, stable, and a very barren landscape. Now, the painting is,

as you can clearly tell, unfinished. Moreover, it probably suffered from over-cleaning in the 19th

century, but it's a hauntingly simple work. Most probably, Pierrot painted it for himself.

Pierrot was a profoundly intellectual painter and a mathematician, and it's the abstract purity that

emanates from his paintings that resonated with 20th century artists and viewers who were exploring

modern abstract painting. Once rediscovered for that reason, his narrative penetration and ability to

move us have ensured his rank among the greatest artists of the Renaissance. His great fresco cycle,

The Legend of the True Cross at Arezzo, will be discussed in the next lecture. Thank you.