The Phantom of the Opera
The River Tiber, as it descends from the slopes of Mount Fumaiolo and reaches the woods at
the foot of the mountains of the moon, suddenly picks up speed in that narrow strip of Tuscany
that lies between the two confines of Umbria and the Marches.
Here on a green plain, worn away by the course of the river, lies the town of Borgo San Sepolcro,
where Piero della Francesca was born.
He was born sometime between 1415 and 1420, but it is not known exactly when.
Piero della Francesca was greatly admired throughout his life by his contemporaries,
but from the 16th century onwards, he became strangely forgotten.
Nevertheless, his art, with its archaic yet elegant forms blending with the naturalistic
portrayals of simple country folk, had great influence on other Italian painters, especially
in eastern Italy.
It was not, however, until the 20th century that Piero della Francesca was once again
recognized for the truly great artist that he is.
According to local tradition, Borgo San Sepolcro was built around an oratory, founded in 934
A.D. by two pilgrims, Arcanus and Egidius, returning from Jerusalem with precious relics
brought from the tomb of Christ.
During the first half of the 15th century, Borgo San Sepolcro became the hotly contested
prize of the ambitions of the Papal States, the Commune of Florence, and the grasping
lords of Milan, the Visconti.
In 1441, after the defeat of the Milanese at Anghiari, the town was sold by the pope
to the Florentines for the sum of 25,000 gold florings.
Then came the rebuilding of the town, and the influence of the Renaissance architects
and artisans took hold.
The family house of Piero della Francesca is a fine example of this, for being well-to-do
merchants and artisans, they could afford a home in the new style.
We then learn, from a letter sent by Domenico Veneziano to Piero di Medici, begging him
to grant Domenico the commission for an altarpiece in a Florentine church, that both he, Domenico,
and Piero were in Perugia.
Piero was probably in his twenties, but we have no information about what kind of artistic
training he might have received up till then.
The two artists worked on a fresco in the house of the lords of the city, the Baglioni
family.
Unfortunately, nothing is left to us of this work, because the whole town quarter was razed
to the ground at the orders of the pope, in order to build the military fort known as
the Rocca Paulina.
However, Veneziano's letter to Piero di Medici was successful, because a year later, in 1439,
he traveled to Florence with Piero della Francesca to paint the frescos in the choir in the Church
of Sant'Egidio, attached to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.
Again, these frescos were destroyed during a period of Baroque transformation of the
church in the 17th century.
Piero della Francesca's contemporaries held these frescos to be one of the most beautiful
fresco cycles of Florentine 15th century art.
Piero spent only a very short time in Florence, probably no more than a year.
This Florentine year, however, was a key moment in his life and his artistic career.
At the time, Lorenzo Ghiberti was working on the third door of the baptistry, which
became known as the Paradise Gates, perhaps at the suggestion of Michelangelo.
This door has only 10 large panels, as opposed to 26 on the other door.
During his sojourn, Piero would have had the chance to admire the impressive cupola of
the cathedral, the Pazzi Chapel, and the Foundling Hospital, with its extensive facade graced
by cherubs, handiwork of Andrea della Robbia, its airy porticoes.
He would have noted the natural equilibrium in the figure of Donatello's St. George in
Orsan Michele, observed Fra Angelico's crucifixions, and been enchanted by the solid statuesque
figures of Massaccio.
But Florence was not just a city of art.
Beneath the Florentine skies, the whole history of Europe was unfurling.
It was an era of struggle for political supremacy.
Piero would have seen the followers of the papal court of Eugene IV, who was in Florence
to conclude the Council of Basi, unfortunately without great results, set up to unify the
Greek and Roman churches.
Other courts passed through Florence as well.
There was the military following of the French Duke, Renato d'Angiù, who aspired to the
Kingdom of Naples, and there was the Emperor of the East, John VIII Paleologus, and his
exotic Byzantine entourage.
The faces and magnificent clothing of the courtiers were to be remembered in Piero della
Francesca's art forever.
Although Florence was just becoming an exciting place for an artist to work in, Piero left
the town and seems to have deliberately sought the tranquility of his little rural hometown
to pursue his artistic studies and research.
His intense studies reveal a very modern and questioning artistic spirit.
The first painting that we can still see today was a polyptych commissioned by the confraternity
of the Misericordia in Borgo.
It shows a central Madonna the size of a church, sheltering the human race under her cloak.
The Madonna is flanked on either side by saints.
Next comes a naked St. Sebastian, painted very much in the style of Massaccio.
Next to John the Baptist, dressed in the symbols of poverty.
In the panels on the right, you can see St. Andrew and St. Bernardino of Siena.
The polyptych was designed very much in the old-fashioned popular form, typical of devotional
works of medieval times.
There is a strict hierarchy of holiness, which culminates in the depiction of an outsized
Madonna against a gold background.
But the application of those new revolutionary ideas of perspective and light, which Piero
had picked up while he was in Florence, make this Madonna different from her more antique
sisters.
Among the donors and the faithful men and women sheltering under her cloak, Piero added
a self-portrait and a portrait of Giovanni Bacci, who is the man dressed in red.
Even in his tragic painting of the crucifixion, he bore a Florentine in mind, the artist Massaccio.
At this point in his career, Piero began to set his religious scenes against the backdrop
of a familiar environment.
This was frequent in early Renaissance painting.
A notable example is the Baptism of Christ, which now hangs in the National Gallery in
London, where the River Jordan is actually a depiction of the River Tiber in its early
stages.
The characters in the painting reflect those seen in Florence.
They are well-rounded and transude energy.
All the objects in the picture, the celestial and human figures, are given the same dignified
treatment from the silvery tree to the exotic sweet-faced angels and the neophyte undressing
by the side of the river.
This panel was originally set between two other panels, portraying the two apostles,
Matthew and John, which are now exhibited in the Museum of San Sepolcro.
Once again, in the tiny painting of Saint Jerome and a devotee, the surroundings of
Borgo San Sepolcro and the town with its tall bell towers are evident in the background.
The painting is in a Venice museum, but it is very badly conserved, and the chemical
reactions of the paints have turned it extremely black.
The Valley of Marecchia brims with grim castles, left over from times of bitter warfare, facing
each other across the valleys.
For the first time since his Florentine experience, Piero left Borgo San Sepolcro for this valley.
The area had been gradually taken over by warring signorias, who were among the first
to understand the political importance of image.
Piero had been summoned to Rimini by Sigismond Pandolfo Malatesta, who was one of the most
daring and ferocious of all the warlords, but whose overweening arrogance brought about
his own downfall when he dared to take on the pope.
According to popular tradition, which Dante picks up on, the Malatesta family were extremely
violent.
Their power, however, was established while they were in the pay of the Viscontis.
The town of Rimini flourished around the splendid monuments left over from Imperial Roman rule.
Of special note was the bridge of Tiberias over the Marecchia River and the Arch of Augustus.
When Leon Battista Alberti came to Rimini on loan from the pope at the request of Sigismond
Pandolfo in 1450 to rebuild the family mausoleum in the ancient church of San Francesco, he
took his inspiration from the Roman monument still standing in the town.
The inside of the church is like a vast hall where there is more than enough room for all
the tombs of the Malatesta family.
Sigismond even had the tomb of his last lover, Isotta Delle Atti, placed there.
Piero had been invited to decorate the chapel of the holy relics.
He painted a heraldic scene showing Sigismond Pandolfo Malatesta in a festooned throne room
full of columns kneeling in front of his patron saint, Saint Sigismond, dressed as an emperor.
The scene reminds us more of a courtly cavalier scene rather than an act of holy devotion.
In true late Gothic style, Sigismond is portrayed in profile like on medal or coin.
The dogs symbolize faith.
Behind them an opening in the wall gives us a glimpse of the fortress of Rimini which
represents the legitimacy of the Malatesta power.
A few years later, Piero moved north towards the river Estuary where the Po begins to divide
into thousands of shimmering branches as it flows into the sea.
The countryside extends over endless flat mirror-like surfaces of water surrounded by
rich fertile land carefully cultivated and grazed by cattle.
He had been summoned to the court of the Esti family in Ferrara to paint a fresco in the
church of Saint Augustine and in the duke's study in the castle.
Unfortunately, there is not a single trace of his work left in this city today.
Although there is longer any material evidence of his sojourn in Ferrara, he left his mark
in the villa of Schifanoia in the masterpieces executed by Cossa and de Roberti.
Piero della Francesca's influence is notable in the disturbing astrological figures and
in the magic of the tales which are populated by mysterious, merry inhabitants of an ideal
city.
They dance in celebration of Borso d'Este, lord of the city, in sumptuous gardens.
The use of space and color make one think instantly of Piero della Francesca and of
the Flemish painters he met and with whom he worked in the palazzo.
The ominous battlements of the fortified towers of the fortress of San Leo stand out over
the valley of Marecchia.
The fortress stands on a massive rock which lends its name to the Montefeltro family thus
called because of an ancient temple dedicated to Jupiter, the coffin bearer, which once
stood on the rock.
The Montefeltro family originated from San Leo, where they lived as vassals of the emperor
Barbarossa.
Later they came under the rule of the pope and they moved to Orbino, which they turned
into one of the main centers of Renaissance art, all within a very short space of time.
Federico Montefeltro concentrated all his ambition on the construction of the ducal
palace.
Although he was a fighting man, he had much rather be seen as an educated humanist.
So he called on Piero della Francesca to come and organize the work on his Renaissance palace
in collaboration with the architects Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio Martini.
Here in the elegant rooms of the palace, Piero painted the two portraits of Federico and
his wife, Battista Sforza, in profile facing one another.
These portraits hang today in the Uffizi gallery in Florence.
The landscape against which the duke's portrait is set does not reveal much, but is probably
an area of countryside well known to the painter.
The severe features of the duke seem to weigh upon his dominions, and his personality merges
with the surrounding countryside.
The duke's severe profile reveals his strong character, which is as harsh as the dukedom
he rules.
Man is no longer part of the landscape, but the landscape is now subservient to man.
Battista Sforza's profile is enhanced metaphorically by the fine detail of her jewelry, which is
drawn with typical Flemish precision.
Note too the ribbons which tie up her gathered tresses.
According to humanist thought, perfection is central to inner spirituality.
On the back of the portraits, the portraits show the dukes accompanied by virtue in a
scene where pagan and allegorical meaning mix.
In the National Art Gallery of the Marches, housed in the ducal palace, there is a flagellation.
It is a small painting of quiet beauty, which has been subject to different interpretation
by art critics.
The most ancient theory is that the young fair-haired man in the group, standing on
the right, is Odantonio da Montefeltro, brother of Federico, who was killed in a wager.
The two other men are his friends.
According to another theory, the three men are the three contemporary figures who are
arguing about the threat of Constantinople and a possible Turkish crusade.
Behind the group, in a room of perfect architectural perspective, the flagellation of Christ takes
place.
The painting can be interpreted both as the sacrifice of Odantonio or the imminent sack
of Constantinople by the Turks.
Pontius Pilate, on his throne, is dressed in the robes of the Byzantine emperor John
VIII Paleologus.
However one may choose to interpret this painting, there is a sense of anxiety, which is caused
by the contrast between the serene group on the right and the tragic tension of the flagellation
on the left.
Federico died in 1482 and was buried in San Bernardino.
A beautiful altarpiece painted in 1472 to commemorate the birth of a son, Guido Baldo,
and the death of his wife Battista, was set up in the Franciscan church.
An ostrich egg, like a pearl, hangs from a small vault over the group.
It symbolizes the moment of birth and resurrection.
The Madonna's face reflects the oval form of the egg.
She is flanked by two groups of saints.
The figures standing in a semicircle around the Madonna appear less statuesque than in
other works by Piero.
The duke is shown in profile, like in his portrait, and he is dressed in full armor
as a celebration of the victory gained at Volterra in the same year.
When Guido Baldo died without leaving any heirs, Federico's other son, Francesco Maria,
became Duke of Urbino.
It was more or less at this time that Piero produced a painting entitled Madonna with
Child and Angels for the Chiesa della Grazia on the outskirts of the town.
This work is a splendid association of light and space.
It can be seen today in Urbino.
The light that filters through the stained glass gives the figures their substance.
The faces and the child are illuminated.
The different modulations of light define the surroundings and the people, setting distance
and giving depth to the scene.
Thanks to the teachings of Domenico Veneziano and his knowledge of Flemish art, Piero had
at last found a definitive solution to the use of light, which he combines with space
not only to define the reality of real life, but also to make those visionary elements
become part of reality too.
From early medieval times right up until the Renaissance, Arezzo was a busy, flourishing
commercial center.
Even though somewhat set apart, Arezzo was a wealthy city too.
Piero was summoned to this monumental city by Giovanni Bacci to complete a fresco cycle
of the legend of the True Cross in the Church of San Francesco.
Giovanni was a young, educated official of the Arentine Curia, and his wealthy merchant
family were financing this fresco cycle.
The artist Bici di Lorenzo, who had begun the cycle, had died that year and had only
just completed the vault and the archway at the entrance to the chapel.
The cycle begins with a naked, defenseless Adam.
The dying patriarch dispatches his son Seth to beg for some holy oil from the Angel of
Paradise, but the angel sends him instead seeds from the tree of original sin in order
to help him expiate his sins.
In the scene on the left, Adam is buried with the seeds in his mouth.
His moment of expiation of sin will only come when the tree breaks into blossom.
In the first scene of the next section, the Queen of Sheba, having accomplished her journey
to Jerusalem, pauses in front of a small bridge over the river Silo.
She foretells that the wooden structure of the bridge will be used to build Christ's
cross, and she kneels down in her trouble to pray.
King Solomon arrives at the royal palace.
The Queen relates her premonition to the King, telling him that the wood from the bridge
will cause the end of the Jewish reign.
King Solomon is troubled by the premonition, and he has the sacred wood removed from the
bridge and buried in an attempt to avert destiny.
The scene is an allusion to Christ's passion and to the Via Crucis.
Under God's gaze, the angel Gabriel announces to a statuesque Mary that she soon will be
with child.
Inherent in this annunciation is Christ's death on the cross, which will be made from
the sacred wood of the bridge.
The flight of the angel 300 years later reminds us of Constantine's dream, where he is told
that only by defeating the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Maxentius can the cross become Christian.
This is the first nocturnal scene ever to appear in a fresco in Italy.
The scene shows that peculiar moment of calm before the armed encounter with the Emperor.
Bearing the cross before him, Constantine goes to meet the enemy.
The two armies clash on the bridge of Milvio outside the gates of Rome.
The sky is filled with the crisscross of their spears and the imperial flax.
In the next cruel scene, the Jew is held to torture by being lowered into a well in order
to get him to tell Helen, Constantine's mother, where the cross has been hidden.
Thanks to the hapless Jew's indications, the crosses are discovered and unearthed amidst
a general scene of consternation and tension.
Jerusalem in the background is portrayed as a rezzo, with its circular city walls which
are still partly standing today.
The true cross is distinguished from the other crosses of the robbers, because when it is
touched, a dead man is miraculously resurrected.
Three hundred years later, the impudent King Cosros of Persia, who steals the cross to
decorate his throne, is punished by Flavius Heraclius, the Emperor of the East.
The scene is a tumult of spears and weapons, faces and flags.
The King of Persia's son is run through by a spear, and the King himself is captured.
He is later put to death for refusing to convert to Christianity.
In the final scene, Heraclius, dressed as a pilgrim, returns the cross to Jerusalem.
This is a true work of masterpiece.
The narrative style is unique.
Each scene is a little artistic world of its own.
The unity of style joins the scenes together with each stroke of the artist's hand.
The cathedral in Arezzo is illuminated by the light filtering through the Gothic stained
glass windows in the high naves.
Here Piero produced a country-fied and sweet-faced Madonna, dressed in pale, noble garb.
She is an imposing figure, painted with painstaking detail.
The picture probably dates from the 1460s, when Piero was completing the fresco cycle
in the Church of San Francesco.
A little earlier, Piero is recorded as having visited Rome at the summons of the humanist
Pope Pius II.
The papal city had become a shameless center of commerce and indulgences, costly ostensories
and otherworldly paraphernalia.
Piero della Francesca was received at court with all due honor, but his work was little
understood.
The success of his fresco cycle in the papal palace never really took off, and even today
little is known about this work.
Piero's fresco cycle was in fact later destroyed to make way for a work by the great Raphael.
Back in his artist studio in Borgo, Piero prepared a famous altarpiece for the church
in the convent of Sant'Antonio, in Perugia.
At that time, the beautiful town was travailed by the constant and inconclusive warfare of
the proud ruling Odi and Baglioni families.
The freedom of the commune was gradually being whittled away, but nevertheless Perugia was
still one of the most important commercial and financial centers of central Italy, and
the citizens of Perugia took a pride in the town's appearance.
The altarpiece of the nuns of Sant'Antonio is kept today in the National Gallery of Umbria.
It is an important work because it introduces some innovative artwork.
In upper part, the Holy Ghost presides over an annunciation, which takes place against
an amazing backdrop of arches, which Hark of Piero's Florentine experience.
The arches are an extraordinary study in perspective.
Below this, there is a Madonna with child, surrounded by a congregation of four saints
watching over the convent.
They appear to be encapsulated by small apse.
The altarpiece is built like a Spanish retinal, but as a result of Piero's time in Rome, there
is also a distinct Flemish influence about the work.
Monterchi is on a green hill not far from San Sepolcro.
It is a medieval city, and is the birthplace of Piero's mother.
In a tiny chapel nearby, Piero painted a Madonna, representing her as a young peasant girl pregnant
with child.
Her whole attitude is one of natural serenity.
All the details are loaded with symbolism, and the parting of her dress alludes to the
coming birth.
Two beautiful, identical angels hold open the cloth sides of the bare pavilion under
which she stands.
In the last years of his life, Piero della Francesca never once left San Sepolcro.
In the palazzo which housed the town administration, in what is now the museum, Piero painted a
fresco of the resurrection from the tomb, in homage to the city.
In Italian, the word Sepolcro means tomb.
In this picture, Piero paints a portrait of himself as a young man among the sleeping
soldiers, who represent unawakened and sinful humanity.
Christ seems to literally spring out of his sepulcher, with a terrible, severe expression.
Unity is raised to the divine through him.
In the countryside around the figure of Christ, winter is turning into spring, indicating
that new times have arrived.
The resurrection is the last act of Christ's mission to bring salvation to mankind.
By 1482, Piero was almost blind, which probably explains why he never completed his last work,
which is a nativity.
This painting is now held in London.
Once again, Jerusalem is depicted with the bell towers of San Sepolcro, and the dramatic
surrounding countryside is local and familiar.
A Christ child is laid on the skirt of his mother's cloak, and they are linked together
in Holy Communion.
A thoughtful Joseph, seated on his pack saddle, is almost excluded from the scene.
The donkey's sinister brain heralds the passion and foretells the coming of the apocalypse,
when a chorus of angels chant a hymn of life.
Although Piero was blind, he never ceased to be active.
He had lost the gift of light, which had been ever present in his artistic work.
But in the peace of his home, he dedicated himself to mathematical study and the theory
of perspective.
Piero took time to reflect upon and reformulate the artistic intuition that he had cultivated
during his days in Urbino, and which are manifest in the painting of the ideal city, which hangs
in the local museum.
Whether this painting is really by Piero della Francesca or not is of little importance.
Created in the abstract rigor of numbers, that which he had intuited as an artist.
Numbers, however, of forms.
Numbers are no longer color because colors live in light, and his light had gone out.
In the death register in the Congregation of Mercy, Piero della Francesca's name appears
on the 12th of October, 1492, the very day when Christopher Columbus set foot in the
New World.
It was an amazing coincidence, but new horizons were being opened, and a new epoch of uncertainty,
of doubt, and scientific discovery had begun.
Piero della Francesca will always remain a very different artist in the canon of Renaissance
art, and this was perhaps why his works only came to be in the 20th century.
His art was founded on his careful mathematical studies of proportion and perspective, which
inspired his sublime, terse, poetic style.
His paintings with their geometric forms were echoed in the works of later abstract artists,
and the eloquent mystery of his silent forms found way into metaphysical art forms.
Even in these modern times, his motionless figures of light beg for an answer.
Uh oh.