The Mariology of Piero della Francesca (Part 1)

Piero della Francesca (Sansepolcro [Tuscany] 1418-1492) is undoubtedly one of the greatest Italian artists of the 15th century. His spacious, monumental, and rationally impassive painting attains the highest ideals of early Renaissance, a time when art and science are united by deep bonds. Like Leonardo da Vinci, born two generations later, Piero is an excellent experimenter.

Master of fresco, a technique in which he excels, is mainly interested in applying the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative and devotional painting: the absolute mathematical rigor of his creations contributes to the abstract and iconic quality of his paintings, conferring powerful sacred value to his masterpieces.

Context

Modern Humanism and Modern “Devotio”

Piero’s time is the humanism, a phenomenon that, from the beginning of the 15th century, expresses a new confidence in the world, in man, and in his cognitive abilities. The study of classical literature and art allows the last phase of the Middle Ages to lay the foundations for the future Renaissance. Ancient texts are rediscovered, ancient statues, medals, coins revive classical culture, Greek and Latin.

# The Recovery of Human Physicality in Art and TheologyThe depiction of humanity, its physicality, is no longer constrained by the limitations of representation, which should never be overly realistic, especially when portraying saints, virgins, or even God. It becomes evident that there is a drive towards research and exploration in the opposite direction, embracing a realism that essentially celebrates human beings, entrusting God and celestial creatures with faces, bodies, and sensations that express the everyday world.Popular culture has become a model of tragic values. Therefore, there is no longer fear in representing God in human form. A common speech that becomes epic in monumental figures, in cycles that exalt the Virgin as a mother, in the torn humanity of Christ on the cross, in intimate mystical asceticism through the life of a saint.In reality, humanism in Italian art begins long before its literary parallel. Arnolfo, Giotto, Nicola Pisano are the ancient fathers of this new sentiment for humanity, still primordial, perhaps unconscious, but already proudly tense to claim God’s right to exist independently of the divine. All iconoclastic modesty began to disappear. There was no longer fear of touching God’s lips with the brush, of drawing the bust of Christ or the pregnant belly of Mary.There is no desire for synthesis because humanity contemplates itself in an aesthetic narcissism that leads it to seek in virgins, saints, and Christ, as well as in a child, the dramatic characteristics of its physicality, its indispensable humanity. All this is in art the miracle of humor: ancient art, literally rediscovered during this period, refers to the celebration of someone’s myth, in the elegance of the nude, where a smooth forehead becomes pure thought.

Piero della Francesca believed in man and raised his beauty with a moral and ethical canon, capable of elevating the highest spirits to the most sublime moments of existence. The extreme challenge of early medieval painting is to dialogue with the divine without being able to encapsulate it within the visual lexicon of humanity. Faces are silent, distant, framed in architectures that are a nearly metaphorical symbol of the surrounding world.

The architectural values had as a backdrop not a landscape or a sky crossed by clouds or birds, but a gold leaf with which the very modern Piero is forced to confront himself in the Polyptych of Mercy, probably his first known work.

But Piero’s figures, especially the Holy Virgin Mary, express themselves through silence, through an impersonality full of meanings, in faces chiseled in volume, broad features inhabited by simple thoughts, a dramaturgy that resolves, like shadows, in light. Peace in the intelligible space.

What impresses is the use of light, diffused light that comes from the somatic mixture of colors, which he learns from Fra Angélico on the frescoes in the convent of San Marco in Florence, and thus transforms into poetry.