Francesca, Piero Della

Quibbles include some tenuous conjectures about the development of the artist's thinking (which, if the author is taken at face value, includes the Zohar). It's too bad that more progress hadn't been made on the newly-restored Arezzo frescoes at the time of publication. But these aside, this is as definitive and gorgeous of a presentation of Piero as one could fairly ask for. Simply a beautiful book.

Piero Della Francesca: The Frescoes Of San Francesco In Arezzo

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Piero Della Francesca: The Frescoes Of San Francesco In Arezzo
Marylin Lavin Aronberg , and Marisa Dalai Emiliani
Manufacturer: Skira
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 8884910234
Release Date: 2002-01-15

A breath- taking view of Piero della Francesca's frescoes of The Legend of the True Cross, the pictorial cycle painted by the artist in the basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo and known throughout the world as one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, shown for the first time after the long restoration.

The book presents for the first time the entire cycle of frescoes after the complex job of restoration documenting in detail each scene with spectacular close- up images. Recent restorations have infact made possible to evaluate on a closer basis the techniques used in the execution of the frescoes as well as the method with which the artist worked. The sense of harmony that spectator derives from the perfect co- ordination of attitudes, gestures and anatomy in every single scene, must have been the result of an exceedingly lengthy phase of study through preparatory sketches and drawings readied for each individual figure, done in such a way that each one occupies its own space, geometrically measurable, in careful relation to all the others, with a view to creating a scene with a powerful sense of illusion in which the miracle of light that reveals all offers a precise perception of the true and the natural. Fifteen long years to repair, recover and safeguard the fascinating stories that Piero painted in the mid- 15th century to illustrate the major episodes of the Legend of the True Cross, an iconographic theme quite widespread from the time of the Crusades up to the Renaissance and especially dear to the Franciscan friars.

Piero della Francesca, one of the greatest painters of the fifteenth century, was also an accomplished mathematician. This book—the first combined study of Piero’s work as a mathematician and as a painter—explores the connections between these two activities and thus enhances our understanding of both his paintings and his writings.
J. V. Field begins by describing Piero’s education, family background, and training as a painter. The book then examines the strong sense of three-dimensional form shown in his art and the abstract solid geometry discussed in his writings. Field next considers Piero’s treatise on perspective and paintings that exemplify the prescriptions it provides and assesses the optical or pictorial “rules” Piero followed as a painter. Piero is identified as a figure of some intellectual weight—as a learned craftsman. The book concludes by considering the historical significance of the tradition to which he belonged and its connections with the Scientific Revolution.