Original subtitles

Piero della Francesca has been seen as one of the mystery men of Western art,

a painter of enigmatic images rendered with mathematical precision and monumental vision,

but which are often strange and elusive, haunting even.

He was overlooked for centuries and subsequently was seen as a precursor

to the achievements of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

But he's now recognised as their equal.

Piero della Francesca was born around 1413,

here in the town of what was then called Borgo San Sepulcro, now just San Sepulcro,

then as now a thriving commercial centre on the Umbrian-Tuscan borders.

His father was a tanner but also a successful wool dealer,

and the young Piero went to Abacus school and studied mathematics,

effectively training for a career as a merchant.

We know very little about his life.

We do know of 26 surviving paintings, most still in situ.

Nevertheless, some kind of life story can be pieced together,

and by his late teens, there's evidence that he'd chosen the path of an artist.

But San Sepulcro must have seemed too small for a young man with ambition,

and like many, he decided to travel.

Piero went first to Perugia, where he met a celebrated regional painter, Domenico Veneziano,

and the two of them came here to Florence in 1439

and worked together on the decorations of the walls of a church which has now been destroyed.

Now, Florence was this extraordinary cradle of culture.

There'd been a rebirth of classicism 50 years or so before,

and by this time, by the time Piero was here,

there was an extraordinary flourishing of scholarship and arts,

which no doubt fuelled the young artist.

The next few years remain something of a blank,

but we know that around the age of 30,

Piero returned to his hometown of San Sepulcro.

Piero's first major work as an independent artist was this one,

and we know that he signed a contract in 1445 to an organisation,

a compagnia, who were dedicated to Santa Maria de la Misericordia,

or the Blessed Virgin Mary of pity and charity,

which had an oratory or a building on the edge of San Sepulcro,

which it used to minister to the sick and the poor.

And this was an altarpiece commissioned for the little chapel there.

Now, the structure of it is quite complicated,

but it follows an existing altarpiece that Piero had to paint over,

and the frame, which would have been wonderfully elaborate, is lost.

And this reconstruction has all of Piero's work, all the panels,

but the ornate frame that binds it together is lost.

Nonetheless, this work, called the Misericordia altarpiece,

is unified, not because of Piero's style,

which actually is very varied in this work,

but because of the way he has a gold background

that gives an estherial glow to the work,

which binds all pieces together,

and because the five major figures in the work,

four saints and the Virgin herself at the centre,

are standing on the same stone step,

which seems to cut through space and time.

Now, the work began in 1445

with the two figures on the left-hand side.

On the extreme left, Saint Sebastian,

a saint who was deemed to protect people from the plague,

and therefore had a great relevance to the Compagnie.

And then, Saint John the Baptist.

And the Baptist is painted in a radical way.

First of all, his halo signifies his saintliness,

but look, it's painted with real perspective,

even though it's faded over the ages.

Secondly, he clutches himself like so,

and his eyes are lowered,

as if he's focusing inwards on himself.

In fact, some art historians have described it

as a rather fanatical image.

I think it's more mystical than fanatical.

And then the crown and glory of Piero's first phase

in painting this work, the Crucifixion,

which is above the Virgin Mary,

and the Virgin Mary herself is clad in black

and reaches out in a very dramatic gesture to her son,

with John the Evangelist on the right-hand side

seemingly running towards and opening himself up

to his Lord and Master and Saviour.

Now, a few years later,

Piero paints in a style that's more relaxed,

more calm.

Some people think the emotion is deeper.

I certainly do.

And he completes the picture

with two saints here on the right-hand side.

On the extreme right is San Bernardino,

a local saint from Siena,

who died in 1444

and was canonised in 1450.

And the fact that Piero has a halo above him

means that he must have painted this image

sometime soon after 1450.

Now, Bernardino was part of a Franciscan order.

He was a celebrated preacher

who was part of a kind of religious revival

or renewal that was going on

through Tuscany and Umbria at this time.

And then, to his left,

St John the Evangelist,

author of the fourth gospel,

holding the book,

leading into the central image,

Mary,

who actually is much smaller than life-size,

but when you look at the picture,

she seems a colossal figure

because of the way she towers over her devotees

who are kneeling at her feet,

women on the right,

men on the left.

They're the figures with which we,

and certainly the faithful

who came to this in the 15th and 16th centuries,

would identify with.

And also, it reminds us

that the cult of Mary,

or Mariolatry,

was rife during the 14th and 15th centuries.

In fact, it's been estimated

that of all churches built

in the 14th and 15th centuries,

more than a third of them

were dedicated in various forms

to the Virgin Mary.

Piero's reputation was clearly spreading

because around 1450,

he received a commission

from the Lord of Rimini,

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta.

Piero paints him life-size

and tries to show the world

that Sigismondo

wasn't just a successful soldier,

nor the despot he was portrayed as

by his various enemies.

He kneels at the feet

of his saintly namesake,

whose bones are actually buried

in the chapel

in which the painting was made.

And Piero's job as an artist

is to try and bring everything

back to life.

But the majority of Piero's work

remained in the town of his birth.

This work was painted around 1455,

when Piero was living in San Sepulcro

and was part of a much larger altarpiece

for the church in San Sepulcro,

Santa Maria della Pieve,

where all the local baptisms took place,

with the central panel,

as we can see here,

depicting the baptism of Christ.

All the traditional elements are there,

the old believers of the city of Jerusalem

in the background,

the new believers stripping off,

with Christ, St John the Baptist,

and the three angels.

He makes it local, though.

The landscape,

which he pays a good deal of attention to,

is that of San Sepulcro

and the Valley of the Walnuts,

as it was known,

with a walnut tree here

in the foreground over Christ's head.

There are two curious aspects

to this painting, though.

One is the fact that Christ and St John

look as if they're standing

in a dry riverbed,

but in fact,

Piero has very acutely observed

the optical phenomenon of reflection

and the angle of sunlight.

Also, he's reflecting the biblical myth

that there's a miracle

that takes place in the Jordan

when Christ is baptised

and the flow is reversed.

The second aspect is geometry.

Scholars have related Piero's work

and his compositions

to the work of the great classical mathematician

Euclid.

To the naked eye, though,

it's much easier to see

this line,

this central axis

that starts at the very top of the arch,

goes straight down through the dove

or Holy Spirit,

through the water

that's being poured onto Christ's head,

and straight down through his face

and down through his hands.

And everything emanates from that line.

That's bang at the centre of the picture.

And it's that idea,

this geometric idea,

that sets the tone

for much of Piero's subsequent work.

A marked sense of geometry

looms large in this,

perhaps the oddest of all Piero's works,

made around 1458.

It shows the flagellation of Christ,

tied to a column,

being whipped by curiously languid Roman soldiers,

while Pontius Pilate looks on.

In the foreground,

three men dressed in the clothes

of contemporary aristocrats

seem oblivious to what's happening.

There have been numerous interpretations

of the work and its iconography,

the most interesting of which

relates the three men

to diplomats in the conflict

between Christendom and the Turks.

But the impact of the painting is spatial.

It's like a giant chessboard

on which the figures have been placed,

and the perspective

is so elaborately worked out

that it can actually be reproduced

in plan and elevation,

creating a claustrophobic stage set

in which a brutal ritual

nonchalantly takes place.

In 1458,

Piero comes here to Rome

to decorate the papal apartments

of Pius II,

work which was subsequently covered up

a few decades later

by Raphael.

But then,

according to reports,

Piero hears news

that his mother's died,

so he returns back north

to San Sepulcro.

It seems likely

that sometime soon after

the death of his mother,

Piero began to work

on one of his most celebrated

and popular images,

this one,

the Madonna del Parto.

Now,

the Madonna del Parto

means the Madonna

of the delivery,

which is slightly a misnomer

because she's not giving birth here,

but is clearly

in a heavily pregnant state.

And the work resides

in the small hill town

of Monturkey,

about six miles or so

from San Sepulcro,

and it was in a church

where there was an altarpiece

already in existence,

and Piero painted

this fresco over it,

and it's now been moved

to a rather drab school building

behind protective glass

to protect it

from all the pilgrims

who come from all over the world

to look at it.

Essentially,

it's an image of revelation.

The two angels

on either side of the Virgin

pull open this canopy or tent

to reveal her.

And at the same time,

it mirrors the gesture

that she's making

with her hand

pointing to her womb,

the idea of what's inside

and what is about

to burst forth,

which in turn rhymes

with this amazing space

that Piero has created

from the canopy behind her.

And this idea of flip rhythms

and rhymes in the painting

is wonderfully exemplified

with the two angels,

who in fact,

if you look at her,

are a mirrored image,

one of the other.

And this stems from the fact

that Piero seems to have used

the same cartoon

or drawing sketch

from one to the other,

but just reversed it.

And he's done the same

with the colours

of their robe

and their wings,

this browny red and green.

The heart of the picture

and the dominant,

most dramatic central image

is the opening

in the Virgin's dress

to which she points.

And we read this in two ways.

Firstly, vaginal.

This is the opening

through which Christ will be born.

But we also read it

as a wound.

And in a way,

this anticipates

or prophesies

Christ's wounds on the cross.

So in an image of birth,

death is also present.

But Mary,

as the carrier

of the Christ child,

is also a symbol of hope

because through the birth

of Christ,

people will be saved.

It's a route

to salvation

and redemption.

People come from

all over the world

to look at this image.

But its power

is enhanced

by our knowledge

of what it was

originally intended for.

When it was there

as an altarpiece

in a church,

it formed part

of a cult

that had developed

in the 14th century

throughout Tuscany

and then into Umbria

where pregnant women

would come to pray

in front of images

like this

for the safe delivery

of their child.

And those who couldn't conceive

came to pray

for fecundity or fertility

that they might themselves

have children.

And when we look

at this image

and we compare it,

say, to other images

that Piero has made

of the Virgin Mary,

it seems more personalized,

less generalized.

It might have something

to do

with his own relationship

to his mother

and his state of mind

after her death.

The Madonna del Parto

is perhaps Piero's

most explicitly

personal painting,

but it was soon

to be eclipsed

by the most ambitious

work of his entire life.

Piero della Francesca's

most spectacular work

is here

in the Cappella Maggiore

in the church

of San Francisco

in the hill town

of Arezzo.

He'd begun the work

sometime around

the middle of the 1450s

and we know

he'd finished it

by 1466.

An epic saga

in fresco

filling the wall

with 15 or so

grand scenes

telling the story

of the true cross.

Now, the piece

was commissioned

by a wealthy

mercantile family,

the Bacci,

but the tone

of the piece

was established

by the Franciscan order

who ran this church.

And from the beginning,

Piero was original.

He wanted to experiment

and innovate,

not least with

the technique

of fresco.

Now, traditionally

it's done

on wet plaster,

which Piero does

to begin with.

But restoration

and cleaning

has shown

that in fact

he also used

tempera and oils

on top of the surface

of the fresco

once it had dried

to give it

a kind of luster

and a sheen.

Tragically,

in the 19th century

these frescoes

were badly restored

and there was damp

in them

and so some of them

have been obliterated.

But there's still

enough here

for us to see

quite what an

achievement it is.

Now, the story

of the true cross

effectively

is a 13th century

epic saga

that details

the cross

as an instrument

of salvation,

how it's lost

and found

and finally restored

to Jerusalem.

And all of that

is told by Piero.

But from the beginning,

he has his own

original vision.

So he starts

right at the top

with something

totally from his own

imagination.

That is the ageing

Adam and Eve

talking to their

three children

about the consequences

of their original sin

from which,

of course,

salvation springs

in the form

of the cross.

And from then on in,

it's a saga really

of Hunt the cross

in various forms

in the various images

that he paints.

Historians tell us

that a contemporary audience

would have made

immediate sense

of this work.

But I find it

an amazingly complex

experience

where your eyes

are drawn from

left to right,

from right to left,

up and down

and crossways.

And it seems to me

there's the logical mind

of a rather complex

mathematician at work here.

What I like

is how you start

to make these

extraordinary juxtapositions,

the most powerful

of which

are the two

vast battle scenes

that are on

the lowest walls

that, in fact,

are closest to the viewer,

starting on the far wall

with an image

of Constantine,

the first Christian

emperor,

defeating the infidel

who scramble

out of the river

and off into the distance

without any violence

at all.

All he does

is show the cross

to them.

And rather than

using military might,

a miracle has taken place.

On this wall,

mirroring the non-battle

scene we've just seen

over there,

Piero produces

one of the most

powerful depictions

of a battle,

I think,

anywhere in Italian art.

It reveals itself

to you in different ways

and in different facets

every time you look at it.

For a start,

Piero seems to have done

seven or eight layers

deep of soldiers,

three or four of which

you could say

are unnecessary,

but he wants to

marshal this idea

of chaos.

And when you look

at the work,

you see extraordinary

images,

expressions of fear,

of anger,

of humility,

odd vignettes

like the limbs

of a figure

on the extreme

left-hand side,

bent at the knee

and framing a head

that's been decapitated.

And it's one

of those works

that seems both

intensely personal

as well as universal.

And in fact,

we know that Piero

may have witnessed

the celebrated

Battle of Anghiari

in 1440

when the Milanese

fought the Florentines,

but also we do know

that in 1453

he was issued

with a crossbow

by the commune

of Sansepolcro

in case he needed

to fight

in a battle

against the Neapolitans.

And so this sense

of claustrophobia

and of being involved

is probably the result

of some kind

of direct experience.

The real impact

of this work,

though,

through its ambition,

through its scale,

through its drama,

through its sheer bravura,

is that it seems

to push Piero della Francesca

right to the forefront

of Italian

and, indeed,

Western art,

even though

it was centuries

before that genius

was fully recognised.

As far as we can tell,

Piero remained

unmarried and childless.

It may be something

of a cliché,

but it seems

that he was married

to his life

as an artist.

In 1459,

this large building

was given over

to the people

of Sansepolcro

as a meeting place

and Piero della Francesca,

as already the most

distinguished artist in town,

was given a commission

to produce a work of art

and this is the result.

Now, most works of art

in places like this

are explicit depictions

of civic virtue.

This, though,

is almost unique

because it's a religious

subject matter

and one of the most difficult,

the resurrection of Christ,

which is alluded to

in the Gospels

but not explicitly described.

Now, why would Piero do that?

Well, I think the most obvious answer

is because here he is

having burst out

of the Holy Sepulchre,

burst out of the tomb,

and, of course,

Sansepolcro

is named after the sepulchre.

And the myth is

that fragments from Christ's tomb

were brought here

in the first or second century

after his death.

Piero's approach

to depicting the resurrection

is highly individual,

highly original.

We're down below,

perhaps six or seven feet

from the bottom of the work.

We look up to it.

What we're confronted by initially

are the four soldiers,

some sleeping,

one shielding his eyes

as if he can't bear

to look at that

which we are looking at.

But then we see

the Holy Sepulchre.

Now, there's an element

of mystery here

because we can't see

how Christ has got out.

We can't see

if the lid of the sepulchre

has been pushed

to one side.

And in a way,

Piero manages to maintain

the mystery of the resurrection

by not showing us too much.

On the other hand,

when he shows us Christ,

he shows us a huge amount,

a muscular figure,

credible,

believable,

as if one of us,

although slightly larger than us,

larger than life.

But also,

he's shifted the perspective again

because it's as if,

when we look at Christ,

we're on the same level as him.

He's painted Christ

as if he shares the same plane.

And by doing that,

he suggests a real man

having broken through death

rather than the sometimes

fairy story-like depictions

you get of Christ

floating upwards

above the tomb.

And then look at Christ's eyes.

This is the most extraordinary thing,

I think,

about the painting.

He confronts us.

They're hypnotic.

This isn't the image

of a gentle saviour.

This is the image

of someone who's gone

through the night,

who for three days

has been wrestling with death

and has finally conquered.

And he holds the standard

of the Red Cross

his triumph over death.

On the left-hand side,

there are trees

with no leaves on.

On the right-hand side,

the trees do have leaves.

And that's a much flatter path.

This is a much more rugged

and steep path.

And there's a choice

being given here.

And it's a moral painting.

You have two choices.

You can take the easy way

that doesn't lead anywhere

in particular,

or you can take

the hard slog,

the passage of virtue.

And this, I think,

is the point of having

the painting

in this particular context.

Because in the next room,

this is where meetings

took place

and also where judgments

were made.

And in a way,

Piero is using

the central image

of Christianity,

the resurrection,

as a way more practically

of saying to people,

judges and those

who are about to be judged,

to choose the more difficult

but the virtuous path.

There's a neat postscript

of this painting

because it's widely believed

that the soldier

leaning back against the tomb

with his eyes closed

is Piero himself

and that this, in fact,

is a self-portrait.

Of course, we don't know,

but there's a neat twist,

I think, to this

because most artists,

when they depict themselves

in their work,

have their eyes open

looking out at us,

looking at their work.

But Piero,

one of the most enigmatic

and mysterious figures

in the history of Western art,

chooses

to paint himself

with his eyes closed.

And ironically,

this work and this image

is perhaps

the closest

we ever get to him.

In the 1470s,

Piero made the short journey

to Urbino

for a very illustrious commission.

He'd been summoned

to the court there

to paint a double portrait

of Federico de Montefeltro

and his young wife,

Battista Sforza,

who was only 26

when she died

in July 1472,

having borne eight daughters

and finally a son and heir.

Piero's portrait of the couple

is believed to have been

painted posthumously

as a tribute

from Federico to his wife.

It's unusual

to have a woman

on the viewer's left

as this was considered

the honorary position,

but it's also to avoid

showing his missing right eye,

lost in a joust

that also shattered his nose.

For the remaining

20 years of his life,

Piero stayed

in Sansepulcro.

During the mid-1470s,

Piero began to write

a book on perspective.

This, more than his paintings,

ensured that he was initially

remembered after his death.

At the heart of Piero's studies

was an analysis

of the proportions

of the human body,

which can be seen

as part of an ongoing

programme in Renaissance scholarship,

where man is seen

as the centre of all things.

But Piero's so much more

than a student

of mathematical formulae,

for his art shows

that the human imagination

is the real measure.

Having spent his life

painting works

for other people,

Piero seems to have

ended his career

with a work for himself,

possibly for his family tomb.

The work,

in the past,

so harshly cleaned

that the surface is damaged,

shows the nativity,

with the shepherds

visible in the background

and an angelic choir

strumming and singing

above the vulnerable

Christ child,

who lies on his mother's robe

in the foreground.

It's an odd,

disjointed image,

but it's a joyful picture,

where Piero seems

to have shed

his customary somberness

in favour of

a loud celebration,

and with the sacred scene

once again transported

from the Holy Land

to the outskirts

of San Sepulcro.

Piero died in 1492,

his fame rapidly diminishing,

partly because

the great geniuses

of the High Renaissance

were about to burst

onto the scene,

and also because his work

was in such mainly obscure places.

But 400 years later,

his reputation

began to flourish.

Cézanne and Picasso

both hailed him.

Today, thousands

make the Piero pilgrimage

to Italy,

yet he still remains

the most enigmatic

of all the great artists.