Piero della Francesca 1420 1492. Tatyana Kustodieva: “The painting of Piero della Francesca is one of the highest points of the Renaissance

Piero della Francesca (Piero (Pietro) di Benedetto dei Francesca) - the largest artist and theorist of the era Early Renaissance(1420-1492). Born into the family of a dyer and wool merchant in Umbria, in the small town of Borgo San Sepolcro near Arezzo. It was named after his mother, because... his father died before he was born. Little reliable information has come down about the artist’s life. The first mention dates back to 1431, when Pierrot was working on his first order - painting church candles. < >
He studied with Domenico Veneziano in Florence, under whose guidance he worked in 1439 on the decoration of the Florentine Cathedral of San Egedio (however, the frescoes have not reached our time. He worked in Rimini, Arezzo, Urbino, Ferrara, Rome. 1450-1462 in hometown, where he was a city councilor, was written altar painting"Madonna of Mercy". The artist found unusually expressive techniques when creating the image of the Madonna. Resembling a statue, the figure of young Mary is larger than the figures of those standing at her feet. She spread a heavy cloak over them, everyone can find protection and refuge.

Madonna of Mercy. (“Madonna Misericordia”), central panel; Pinacoteca, Sansepolcro, 1445-1450s.

At the same time as the Madonna of Mercy, Piero della Francesca painted the famous Baptism, intended for the altar of the church of San Giovanni Battista in Borgo Sansepolcro.

"Baptism" (National Gallery, London, 1445-1450.

The frescoes in the altar of the church of San Sansepolcro by Francesco in Arezzo (1452-1466) are the most remarkable creation of the master. They depict history Life-giving Cross, on which Christ was crucified, according to the “Golden Legend” told by the 13th century monk Jacopo de Voragine. . Francesca chose the highlights from many. First - "The Death of Adam", when a tree grows on Adam's grave sacred tree, at the end - the return of the relic to Jerusalem by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. In placing the scenes, Francesca did not follow the narrative, but created a fresco ensemble that was designed for one-time viewing. The combination of volume and at the same time flatness in the image is one of the amazing features of Piero della Francesca, who, observing the laws of perspective, did not create the illusion of depth of space. Even the buildings in the frescoes are depicted in phases, and not at an angle.

History of Adam (Death of Adam). Frescoes in the Church of San Francesco, 1452-1465.

Discovery of the tree of the Cross of Christ: the meeting of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Frescoes in the Church of San Francesco, 1452-1465.

On the facade of King Solomon's palace, the very tall columns diminish so quickly as they move away from the viewer that essentially only the first of them is visible, dividing the fresco into two parts. The fresco is dominated by a calm light, the colors are radiant.

Dream of Constantine. Frescoes in the Church of San Francesco, 1452-1465.

Francesco subtly conveyed the effect of artificial lighting in the beam of light emanating from the angel, the commander’s tent protruding from the darkness. This has no analogy in Italian painting XV century.

Piero della Francesca often visited Urbino, carried out orders for the Duke of Urbino and was probably his friend. The Montefeltro court in Urbino was one of the centers of intellectual life in Italy. “The Flagellation of Christ” was painted for the Urbino Palace in 1455-1460 and represents the result of all the artist’s pictorial searches. This is one of the artist’s most beautiful and most mysterious paintings. The Flagellation scene itself is located in the depths of the portico, against the backdrop of austere architecture. Clear, precise designs are based on precise calculations.

The Flagellation of Christ. National Gallery, Urbino. 1455-1460

By the 1460s. include the frescoes "Madonna del Parto" in funeral chapel Monterchi (Arezzo); "Resurrection of Christ" in the Palazzo Conservatori (Sansepolcro) and St. Mary Magdalene in the Cathedral of Arezzo. In “Madonna del Parto” the artist chose a theme that is rare in Italian painting and quite common in France and Spain - the Mother of God carrying a baby in her womb.

"Madonna del parto" Arezzo. 1460s.

In the 1470s, for the Montefeltro family, he painted paired portraits of Battista Sforzo and Federico de Montefeltro (1465-1475, both Uffizi Gallery, Florence). In the portraits of the rulers of Urbino, two components of the artist’s art were clearly revealed: Dutch and Italian. The Dutch line is especially noticeable in the rendering of the duchess’s hairstyle and jewelry, in the interest in the details of the “landscape” of the duke’s face - deep wrinkles and large moles; Italian - in the type of paired profile portrait, special clarity and structure of space, transparent purity of air. On the back of both panels are depicted the triumphs of the Duke and his wife: Battista is seated on a chair placed on a chariot drawn by two unicorns - symbols of chastity, with open book in the hands surrounded by Virtues; Federico stands on a chariot drawn by a big white horse, with a staff in right hand, crowned with a victorious laurel.

Portrait of Duke Federigo Montefeltro and Duchess Battista Sforza", Uffizi Gallery, Florence. around 1465

Triumph. Duke and Duchess on triumphal chariots, reverse side, Uffiza Gallery, Florence. around 1465.

One of the late masterpieces is the poetic silvery-bluish airy “Rozhdest vo”

Christmas. National Gallery, London.about 1470

Piero della Francesca's last documented work, The Madonna of Montefeltro, or Sacra Conversatione, was painted for the high altar of the Church of San Bernardino in Urbino between 1472 and 1474. (Pinacoteca Brera, Milan). The picturesque altar niche seems to embrace the Madonna and Child, the angels standing before her, the saints and the customer Federico II Montefeltro, who humbly knelt before her. The depth of the niche is emphasized by an elegant detail - an egg suspended
above the head of the Mother of God.

“Madonna of Montefeltro” (“Sacra conversazione”), Pinacoteca Brera, Milan, 1472-1474

IN old age, Piero della Francesca left painting due to deteriorating eyesight, and turned to mathematics, creating his famous treatises: “On Perspective in Painting” and “The Book of the Five Regular Bodies” on stereometry. Piero della Francesca died in Borgo on October 12, 1492. Art Piero della Francesca had a significant influence on italian art in general and especially on artists Northern Italy. The artist's students were Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494) and Luca Signorelli (c.1445-1523), talented artists Quattrocento.

http://www.artprojekt.ru/gallery/francesca/index.html http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki http://artwwworld.org.ua/hudozhniki/Francheska/
Encyclopedia for children. Art, vol. 7, part 1, Avanta+, 1997<

Piero della Francesca was born around 1415 in Borgo Sanse Polcro, a small town located in the picturesque valley of the Tiber River about 80 kilometers southeast of Florence.

Art historians had to establish the date of birth of Piero della Francesca indirectly, since no documents were preserved that would indicate the day of birth of this remarkable painter. The first official record associated with his name dates back to June 1431. From it we can learn that the artist was paid in full for the large wax candles he painted, intended for church needs. Apparently, this order was the first independent work of Piero della Francesca, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that in 1431, although he was young, he had already left adolescence. This is where “approximately 1415” arose as the starting point of the master’s life.

Piero della Francesca's father was engaged in a respectable and profitable business - he traded in leather and wool. In addition to the tannery, he owned several houses and farms. We have almost no information about the childhood of Piero della Francesca, but, undoubtedly, the boy received a good education, since he knew Latin perfectly and was fairly skilled in mathematics, as evidenced by the treatises he subsequently wrote on geometry and perspective.

Presumably, the father of the future painter approved of his son’s studies in mathematics, considering this science necessary for any merchant. However, his hopes that his son would continue his business were not destined to come true. When Piero della Francesca was fifteen years old, he firmly declared his intention to become an artist. This fact was made available to us by Giorgio Vasari, and although his Lives are full of inaccuracies, this evidence still looks plausible. Until 1439, Piero della Francesca most likely did not leave his native Sansepolcro. And in 1439 he did not go to the ends of the world. A record dated September 7 of this year has been preserved, from which it follows that for the painting of the Florentine church of Sant'Egidio "money was paid to the painter Domenico Veneziano and his assistant, called Piero di Benedetto dal Borgo of San Sepolcro." This record is valuable not only because it gives us an idea of ​​​​the whereabouts of Piero della Francesca in 1439. Something else is much more valuable. Thanks to this dry “financial report” we know that the mentor of the hero of our issue was Domenico Veneziano, a master of mood and color. Unfortunately, the paintings in the Church of Sant'Egidio have not survived to this day, and we have no other evidence that Veneziano and Piero della Francesca ever worked together again.

In 1442 Piero della Francesca was elected a member of the city council of Sansepolcro and remained in his hometown for the next few years. In 1445, he received an order to create an altar image for the Brotherhood of Charity (Campagna della Misericordia), an organization involved in charity. In particular, the Brotherhood's concerns included caring for the sick and burying the poor.

The contract stated that work on the altar image must be completed “in three years.” In reality, it lasted much longer. In 1455 (that is, ten years after the signing of the treaty), the Brotherhood reminded the painter in writing that it was “still waiting for the commissioned image to be painted.” Apparently, work on it lasted until 1462, and this suggests, firstly, that Piero della Francesca wrote very slowly, and, secondly, he repeatedly left Sansepolcro, receiving orders outside his hometown.

The most significant part of the master's surviving works is located in Arezzo, a city located near Sansepolcro, as well as in Urbino, 50 kilometers from Sansepolcro. As for longer travels, we can say with confidence that Piero della Francesca repeatedly visited Rimini, where he was patronized by Sigismondo Malatesta, and Ferrara, fulfilling the orders of its ruler, Duke d'Este. The artist also had a chance to visit Rome.

It is known for certain that the master worked in Ferrara in the late 1440s. But when did he appear in Urbino? The artist's name is mentioned only once in the city archives, and this mention dates back to 1469, when Piero della Francesca visited Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father. But the number of works he wrote in Urbino suggests that his connections with this city were not limited to just one visit.

The lack of documentary evidence makes it difficult to date many of Piero della Francesca's works created in Urbino. For example, disputes have not yet subsided regarding the time of painting of the famous paired portrait of the Dukes of Urbino - Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife Battista Sforza. It is usually dated to 1465, but some researchers believe that the artist painted it in 1459, immediately after the Duke’s marriage. Others are inclined to believe that the portrait should be attributed to the mid-1470s, believing that Federigo da Montefeltro ordered it from the painter in order to perpetuate the memory of his wife, who died in 1472.

It is not possible to accurately determine the time of creation of the most significant work of Piero della Francesca - the wall paintings in the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo. The only known year of completion of work on these frescoes is 1466. When did the master begin work? Probably no later than the mid-1450s - after all, as we remember, he wrote slowly and, moreover, had a habit of leaving the place of his “main works” to complete small orders.

Despite being busy in Arezzo and Urbino, Piero della Francesca never left his small homeland. In 1454 he was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the church of Sant'Agostino in Sansepolcro. According to the contract, the painter was given eight years to work on this image. Such an unusually long period suggests that the customers knew about the artist’s main feature - his slowness.

It is curious that eight years was not enough for him. The altar image was completed only in 1469. At the same time as working on this commission, Piero della Francesco was working on the fresco "Resurrection" for the town hall of Borgo Sansepolcro. Around the same time, he also created the fresco “Madonna del Parto” for the church in the nearby town of Monterci, where the artist’s mother was from. Considering such a “geographical dispersion” of the master’s activities, one should not be surprised that he was “sluggish” in working on large orders.

In 1478, the artist signed his last contract - to create a fresco for the Brotherhood of Charity in Sansepolcro (it was also the painter’s first customer, which once again confirms fate’s ability to joke on occasion). The fresco has not survived to this day, so we don’t even know whether Piero della Francesca started work, or whether the order remained on paper. The latter is supported by the fact that the master almost abandoned painting at that time and was enthusiastically working on mathematical treatises. He also began to go blind in the late 1470s.

By the end of his life, Piero della Francesca was almost completely blind. However, in 1487 he was still able, in his own words, to work and was “in a strong mind and sound body.” The famous painter died in October 1492. Being single and childless, he bequeathed all his property to his brother and other relatives. The master's ashes were buried in the abbey in Borgo Sansepolcro.

Many of the master’s masterpieces can be admired in his homeland, in the Tiber Valley (Valtiberina); We offer you a historical and artistic route through the town of Sansepolcro, where Piero was born, as well as the neighboring towns of Monterchi and Arezzo.

Piero della Francesca was born in Sansepolcro around 1412. In the city museum there are four magnificent works by the artist, including the Polyptych of Mercy, commissioned by the religious community of the same name in 1445. In the central part of the picture is the Madonna of Mercy, which, like a huge tent, covers with their mantle of customers and other pious people (on the left - men, on the right - women).

The audience hall houses a large-scale fresco of the Resurrection of Christ, which is considered one of the most important works of the Tuscan painter. The author managed to show both the human and spiritual dimensions of this event; the figure of the Savior occupies a dominant position, it is strong and solemn. Against the background, Pierrot decided to depict the dawn, which becomes a symbol of the beginning of a new life.

Here you can also see a fresco depicting St. Julian, discovered in 1954 in the ancient church of Sant'Agostino (later Santa Chiara). The saint is depicted with a youthful face, wearing an elegant red robe that stands out against the background of greenish false marble. And finally, the fresco “Saint Louis” from the Palazzo Pretorio: the artist dressed this hero in a Franciscan cassock and richly decorated episcopal vestments; in the background is a false niche with precious red and green marble.

From Sansepolcro we move to Monterchi: here, in this wonderful place that rests on a hill near the border with Umbria, Piero della Francesca painted the ancient church of Santa Maria a Momentana. The master’s magnificent fresco “Madonna del Parto” was placed in a separate small museum in 1991. The Virgin Mary is depicted pregnant, which gives the image a sacred and monumental character. Madonna simultaneously expresses the divine and the human; on either side of her, two angels raise the curtain, as if presenting her to us, dressed in a simple blue dress and white shirt, with a deliberately protruding belly.

Our journey through the lands of Piero continues and ends in Arezzo. In the Basilica of San Francesco, in the Bacci Chapel, there is a cycle of fresco paintings on the theme of the legend of the “true cross”. The artist created this masterpiece for the Church of the Franciscan Order approximately between 1452 and 1466. The plot of the cycle is taken from the “Golden Legend” by Jacopo da Varazze, written in the 13th century.

Among the landscapes and images of architectural buildings dear to the artist’s heart, one can notice the city of Arezzo itself - a fortress on a hill - as well as Sansepolcro with houses placed in perspective, like stage decorations. Looking at this story in pictures episode by episode, we see elegant characters drawn with geometric perfection and grace.

Finally, the final point: in the Arezzo Cathedral, in the depths of the left nave, there is a fresco depicting Mary Magdalene. This is one of the most beautiful characters captured by Pierrot's hand; he impresses with the expressiveness of his face and his low, deep gaze. The light emphasizes the colors: white and red robes, green dresses, rosy cheeks.

Until June 26, 2016, the exhibition “Piero della Francesca. A Study of Myth”, which caused great international resonance. The curatorial team of the San Domenico Museum spins several stories around the hero of the exhibition: his dialogue with other masters of the Quattrocento, his discovery in the mid-19th century and his influence on Italian artists of the 1920s–1940s. An unexpected perspective highlights in a new way the importance of Piero della Francesca in the history of European painting and offers a non-political interpretation of the art of the Mussolini era.

Achille Funi. A vision of an ideal city. Fragment. 1935. Paper pasted onto canvas, tempera. Private collection. Courtesy Archive Achille Funi, Milan

The town of Forlì is known outside of Italy for its airport, which receives low-cost airlines from all over Europe. However, until recently, arriving passengers, without stopping, followed to nearby Ravenna, Ferrara, Urbino, Bologna, Florence - in Italy, overflowing with artistic treasures, Forli has little chance of attracting tourist attention. In 2005, the Blue Guide (the best existing historical and cultural guide) to Northern Italy devoted one page out of 700 to Forli, noting that “the city’s architecture has suffered greatly under the influence of Mussolini, who was born nearby,” and the local art gallery is “one of the few museums Italy, which has retained its old-fashioned structure."

Everything has changed since then. Mussolini's development of the historic center made Forlì the starting point of the "European Cultural Route on the Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes", a research and tourism program supported by the Council of Europe. And the renovated city museum, which entirely occupied the former monastery and hospital of San Domenico, has become one of the most interesting in Italy. Its collection remains small (its pride is Canova’s “Hebe” and a grocery store sign by Melozzo da Forlì), but the exhibitions attract many visitors from all over the country and become an occasion for organized tours from abroad.

Based in Forlì, the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi, with the goal of making the city visible on the map of Italy, generously sponsors an exhibition program with a common overarching goal: to highlight names and phenomena in Italian art that have undeservedly found themselves in the shadow of the textbook list of “greats.” In 2008, the exhibition was dedicated to the 17th century painter Guido Cagnacci, obscured by the figures of Caravaggio and Reni, in 2010 - to the Renaissance portrait from Donatello to Bellini, in 2011 - to Melozzo da Forli, in 2012 - to the symbolist sculptor Adolfo Wildt, in 2014 - the liberty style, in 2015 - Giovanni Boldini. But all these names are deceptive: the main interest is the broad context through which the central theme is revealed.

The 2016 exhibition under the not very clear title “Piero della Francesca. A Study of Myth" (Piero della Francesca. Indagine su un mito) in reviews like "What to see in Italy now" is presented as an exhibition of Piero della Francesca, although there are only four works by this master. Resources that still consider it necessary to warn their readers about this circumstance list the names of Fra Angelico, Paolo Uccello, Giovanni Bellini, Andrea del Castagno, as well as artists of later centuries who were influenced by Piero: Edgar Degas, Paul Cezanne, Carlo Carra, Giorgio Morandi...

Austin Henry Layard. History of the Life-Giving Cross. Battle of Heraclius and Khosrow. After frescoes by Piero della Francesca in the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo. 1855. Paper, pencil. Victoria and Albert Museum, London

And this is also wrong. They are all there, but the main interest is not in meeting the expected great, but in the discovery of the unknown. In both the two brilliantly selected Renaissance rooms and the sections dedicated to the reflections of the art of Piero della Francesca in the 19th and 20th centuries, a stream of surprises awaits the audience. Unknown or noticeable only on the outskirts of mainstream art history, artists turn out to be the authors of works that, it would seem, should have glorified them long ago. And, what is no less surprising, these works form a certain integrity, missing in the usual narrative of art history, which separately notes the fascination with Italian primitives in European painting of the second half of the 19th century and the “return to order” as one of the trends that arose after the First World War .

This integrity, revealed in the search for reflections of the myth of the master from Sansepolcro, is the main plot of the exhibition. The introductory section is devoted to the actual formation of this myth: Piero della Francesca was rediscovered in the middle of the 19th century and began to be considered one of the greatest artists of all times thanks to the efforts of very specific people. The leaders in the revaluation of Quattrocento art, as is known, were the British under the leadership of John Ruskin. The Arundell Society, created in 1849, set out to familiarize its compatriots with the treasures of world art, and began publishing reproductions of works by hitherto almost unknown masters. In 1855, the society sent its employee Austin Henry Layard to Arezzo with the mission of making drawings of the paintings of Piero della Francesca. The same Layard who, a few years earlier, revolutionized Europeans’ ideas about antiquity by excavating the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. This archaeological feat was inspired by the desire to prove the authenticity of the Bible using positive science, so it is easy to imagine why Layard was attracted to the frescoes in Arezzo dedicated to the discovery of the True Cross. More surprisingly, once in the Chapel of the Cross, Layard saw in the paintings covering its walls a resemblance to the decor of Assyrian palaces. Delighted by this, he not only made drawings of all the fragments (indeed, his graphics are a little reminiscent of Assyrian reliefs), but also wrote an essay in which he proclaimed Piero della Francesca the first of all fresco masters. With the publication of this essay in the London Quarterly Review in 1858, the “discovery” of Pierrot began. At the same time, Layard's patron and first director of the National Gallery, Lord Eastlake, acquired Piero della Francesca's masterpiece, “Baptism,” for its emerging collection, which became a source of inspiration for many English artists, from Edward Burne-Jones to our contemporary Rachel Whiteread.

Felice Casorati. Silvana Channey. 1922. Tempera on canvas. Private collection

Painted copies of the frescoes in Arezzo, Madonna del Parto and the Resurrection from Borgo di Sansepolcro, made in the 1870s, ended up in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Paris School of Fine Arts, transforming the idea of ​​​​monumental painting, previously oriented towards Raphael and Tiepolo . These copies can now be seen at an exhibition in Forlì, but the works they inspired by Stanley Spencer and Winfred Knight cannot, alas, although they are reproduced in a very informative catalogue. The British at the exhibition are represented only by copyists, the French - by isolated examples (“Semiramis” by Degas, the paired “Balloon” and “Dove” by Puvis de Chavannes, two nudes by Seurat, a small landscape by Cezanne). More than half of the 250 works brought to the exhibition were created in Italy in the 1920-1940s.

This preference is explained not by the capabilities of the organizers - the paintings came from everywhere, from the Washington National Gallery to the St. Petersburg Hermitage - but by a completely logical desire to focus attention on local art. With the exception of the artists closest to the international avant-garde, such as Giorgio De Chirico, Carlo Carra or Giorgio Morandi, who form the backbone of the exhibition at the Milan Novecento Museum, it is still half-forgotten. And when brought to the surface, it is examined in the aspect of the politics of the Mussolini era - in the wonderful 2014 exhibition in the Florentine Palazzo Strozzi “Italian Art of the Thirties: Beyond Fascism”, in fact, fascism was the prism under which the works were perceived. In Forlì, the “city of the Duce,” you will not find a single image of the Duce in the exhibition and no clearly fascist themes.

RAM (Ruggero Alfredo Michaelles. Mannequins 1 (Paris). 1931. Oil on canvas. Courtesy Society of Fine Arts, Viareggio

Antonio Donghi, who painted an equestrian portrait of Mussolini (he was given a prominent place in the exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi), is represented in the museums of San Domenico with lyrical paintings depicting a family with a newly christened baby or elegant summer residents. Achille Funi, who was at the top of the artistic hierarchy during the years of fascism, chose architectural fantasies similar to the marquetry panels from the studiolo of the Duke of Urbino. Ruggiero Alfredo Michaelles, who preferred to call himself by the futuristic acronym RAM, does not have a bronze portrait of the Duce or aerograms glorifying fascist pilots, but compositions with graceful Parisian fashion models. One could see in this approach an analogue of the recoding of socialist realism currently disturbing Moscow, which has reached the point of an absurd attempt to present Alexander Gerasimov as a representative of Russian impressionism, if not for the fact that Mussolini, unlike Stalin and Hitler, adhered to quite broad views in art.

The turn to the art of the Renaissance (and, in particular, to Piero della Francesca) was not imposed on Italian artists by the authorities, but was chosen by them - very many of them - of their own free will. Mario Broglio, who played a large role in this turn as editor and publisher of the influential art magazine Valori Plastici (Plastic Values), did not accept Mussolini from the very beginning, and during the Second World War was an active anti-fascist and sheltered resistance fighters in his country house . In the twenties, he was concerned not with politics, but with purely artistic problems. As his wife Edita wrote, Broglio “sought to revive the value of the third dimension, purity of form, color-body, from which flowed attention to lighting and the desire to see different aspects of reality with new eyes. It was necessary to restore the form in its entirety."

Edita Broglio. Tangles. 1927-1929. Canvas, oil. Private collection, Piacenza

Edita herself, nee Zür-Mühlen, a native of Latvia, educated in Königsberg and Paris, was fond of expressionism and experimented with abstraction in the 1910s, but in the early 1920s she felt drawn to the classics. She explained this by “the need to learn to distinguish between appearance and reality, to realize that temperament, ardor and skill are hostile elements alien to art, which requires discipline, moderation, obedience.” A wonderful still life with egg-like skeins of wool in delicate pink, blue, and yellow colors shows the result of this effort on oneself.

Achille Funi. A vision of an ideal city. 1935. Private collection. Courtesy Archive Achille Funi, Milan

Mario and Edita Broglio became the publishers of Roberto Longhi's book about Piero della Francesca. Published in 1927, it greatly influenced many artists who had until then perceived the cult of the great compatriot at second hand. The “reflections” found in the paintings selected for the exhibition are very different. In some places these are the most general qualities - “silence”, balance of composition, suspended gestures, generality of forms sculpted by diffused light, in others the characteristic harmonies of muted, cool tones are added to this. In others, the reason is the cited motif - an egg transferred from the “Madonna of the Duke of Montefeltro” to a kitchen still life, but retaining its non-domestic significance, or the perspective in which fighting horsemen are shown, who galloped straight from the “Battle of Constantine with Maxentius”, or the pose of a man pulling off his clothes, borrowed from one of the characters in the London “Epiphany”... Sometimes the connection seems too arbitrary, but the neo-Renaissance movement in 20th century painting now looks much more powerful than before.

Pino Casarini. Battle of Barletta. Circa 1939. Mixed media on canvas. Achille Forti Gallery of Contemporary Art, Verona

The exhibition closes with two foreigners: Edward Hopper with two metaphysical landscapes of New York and Balthus with two nudes. Their presence only indicates the significance of Piero della Francesca's influence outside Italy, without revealing this topic. The lack of agreement encourages us to play the game “complete the row” - say, from the Russian one, Malevich’s self-portrait, and many works by Vasily Shukhaev and Dmitry Zhilinsky, as well as, for example, “The Execution of the Narodnaya Volya” by Talyana Nazarenko, which echoes the “Resurrection” from Sanepolcro, would fit in there. We will be satisfied to find at the exhibition paintings by the Armenian Georgy Shiltyan, who studied for three years at the Petrograd Academy of Arts, fled from the Bolsheviks, but without any problems found a place for himself in the Italian art world.

Piero della Francesca