Piero della Francesca, the seduction of perspective on display in Sansepolcro

From March 25, 2018 to January 6, 2019, in conjunction with the presentation of the restorations of the Resurrection by Piero della Francesca ( Borgo San Sepolcro, c. 1412 - 1492), the exhibition “Piero Della Francesca. The Seduction of Perspective,” which will highlight the two sides of Piero Della Francesca: that of the painter and that of the mathematician. “Besides being Maestro d’abaco, Euclidean geometer, scholar of Archimedes,” the presentation reads, "Piero was also an innovator in the field of painting since for him, the latter, in mathematics and geometry, found its substantial foundation. Finally, his writings, especially De prospectiva pingendi, composed in the vernacular for artists and in Latin for humanists, initiated the great experience of Renaissance perspective." The event aims to illustrate, with reproductions of drawings, perspective models, scientific instruments, plaquettes and videos, Piero della Francesca’s mathematical research applied to painting and the consequent legacy left to artists such as Leonardo, Albrecht Dürer, Daniele Barbaro and perspective theorists at least until the mid-1600s.

Curated by Filippo Camerota and Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro and promoted by the Municipality of Sansepolcro, the exhibition project is divided into eight sections: the first section focuses on De Prospectiva Pingendi, the treatise composed by the artist around 1475: it is the first systematic treatise on perspective to be fully illustrated as well as the first in which the procedures described are justified mathematically. The second section delves into The Geometric Principles and analyzes Piero’s relationship with Florence when he arrived there in 1439 to work with Domenico Veneziano on the frescoes of Sant’Egidio: there will be a panel illustrating the perspective scheme of Masaccio’s very famous Trinity and some casts of the bas-reliefs of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gate of Paradise, all to immerse the visitor in the cultural context of Florence at the time, when Donatello and Masaccio were trying to flesh out Filippo Brunelleschi’s insights. The third focuses its attention on The Rules of Perspective Drawing, through models and drawings that will make the visitor aware of the fact that Piero della Francesca was the first artist to really write for artists, providing norms and rules (“His hand,” we read again in the presentation, "was able to draw very thin lines, real Euclidean signs that recalled the skill of the mythical Apelles. Prospectiva for Piero was essentially commensuration, that is, the measured representation of bodies on the surface of the painting. The painting for him was the term of the visual rays. On the painting, the observed magnitudes underwent an apparent decrease proportional to the distance of observation. On this proportional principle the scientific thought of modern painting would be founded.").

The fourth stage discusses The Geometric Bodies, and delves into the relationship between Piero and Luca Pacioli and especially analyzes the famous treatise De quinque corporibus regularibus, finished in about 1482 and focused on polygons and polyhedra. The fifth, The Masters of Perspective, will analyze the works of other artists, such as Lorenzo and Cristoforo Canozzi da Lendinara (who were also friends of Piero), who grappled with the reogle of perspective. The sixth section deals with The Drawing of Architecture: ichnographia, orthographia, scaenographia: for Piero della Francesca a good painter had to be if possible also a good architect, or at least know what was involved in the design of ornaments. The seventh discusses The Human Figure, which shows the visitor how Piero solved the complex perspective design of the human head, and finally the last one presents us with The Deceptions of Vision delving into the effects of representation caused by forcing the relationship between eye and viewing distance.

Gabriele Marconcini, Councillor for Culture of the municipality of Sansepolcro, explained, "Piero della Francesca managed to enrich the pictorial language of the 15th century by drawing on the different expressive traditions of the time - from the Florentine to the Flemish - and drawing inspiration from late antique and Byzantine models, as well as from the mastery of the artisans he got to know and appreciate from a close distance. But in addition to all this, the most novel element is found on having been able to create a new pictorial alphabet by reuniting the world of figurative arts with the teachings of Euclid, Pythagoras and, more generally, the field of study of mathematics."
The exhibition is a project of the Galileo Museum in Florence together with the Palazzo Magnani Foundation in Reggio Emilia.

Visiting hours: June 10 to Sept. 24 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 7 p.m., Sept. 25 to June 9 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2:30 to 6 p.m. Closed Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Tickets: 10 euros full, 8.50 euros reduced (for groups of at least 10 people, young people between 19 and 25 years old, conventioned), 4 euros special reduced (children between 11 and 18 years old), free for children under 10, accredited journalists, Sansepolcro schools. On opening day, March 25, the museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. with free admission. The exhibition catalog, edited by Filippo Camerota and Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro, is published by Marsilio. For info: www.museocivicosansepolcro.it.

Piero della Francesca, the seduction of perspective on display in Sansepolcro

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