Features March 2014
Piero della Francesca: the world knew him not
On the forgotten hero of the Early Renaissance.
In one of his famous letters, the Roman official Pliny the Younger—who surely knew his way around the empire—wrote to a friend describing the upper Tiber valley: “You will experience great pleasure when observing this region from the heights of its surrounding hills: rather than a territory, you will think, in fact, that you are gazing at a painting executed with incredible skill—such is its rich variety and felicitous arrangement [of features]—that your eyes will be satisfied wherever they dwell.” It would be another thirteen centuries before Piero della Francesca, a native of that valley, painted the picture that Pliny imagined. He was born about 1412 in Sansepolcro, a small, reasonably prosperous provincial town, often a pawn in the shifting alliances of Central Italy’s larger seigniorial city-states. Although Piero visited Florence, Ferrara, and possibly Venice—he also received a number...
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