WHAT PIERO SAW (C)

C) Florentine Influences on Piero della Francesca's work

Brunelleschi's Hospital of the Innocents (Ospedale degli Innocenti) is begun in 1419; by the time Piero della Francesca comes to Florence in 1439, the building is complete except for the bas-reliefs meant for the roundels on the facade.

 

Certainly Piero is favorably impressed by Brunelleschi's ideas of one-point perspective and classical proportions for architecture, because when he comes to paint an Annunciation in the gable of an altarpiece for nuns in Perugia, at the convent of Sant'Antonio da Padova  in 1462, he uses one-point perspective in a dramatic way, and he imitates the columns, Corinthian capitals, and rounded arches he would have seen on the portico of Brunelleschi's Ospedale.  (The altarpiece is now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale dell'Umbria in Perugia.)While he could have looked at similar columnar progressions in San Lorenzo and for Santo Spirito, the columns in this Annunciation resemble most closely those of the Hospital.
For a considerably larger

 

Annunciation that Piero paints into the altar wall of his San Francesco cycle in Arezzo around 1455, he remembers earlier Florentine Annunciations, either painted or sculpted:

The column set between angel and Virgin in Lippi and Fra Angelico's versions of the Annunciation seems to have carried over into Piero's image.

Piero's half-figure of God the Father sending down the dove of the Holy Spirit in his Arezzo Annunciation is very close to the figure of God in a Della Robbia Annunciation made for the church of the Innocenti and now in the cloister of the Innocenti. The Della Robbia may be dated after Piero left Florence, but early drawings and colored molds may have been viewable by Piero.(Ghiberti includes a half-God the Father in the sky in several of his East door panels, but the hand gesture is different.)

 

The most exquisite use of the Della Robbia image, though, shows up in Piero's Baptism (now in the  London National Gallery). 
The position of the dove above Christ is very much like the foreshortened dove hovering over Christ in Ghiberti's Florentine Baptistery panel from the North door of 1403-25:
 

But the color of the dove of the holy spirit, white against blue sky, must surely have been inspired by the Della Robbia dove in the Innocenti Annunciation or another earlier Madonna relief (in Peretola now, originally in Santa Maria Nuova, 1441).

Piero's bird is viewed slightly more head on, but the colors of stark white against deep blue pay homage to the colors of tin-glazed terracotta he would have seen in Florence. The spirit hovering over Christ reflects the spirit hovering over Piero's creative process. The beauty of the white flight in air holds captive the viewer of both scenes. As we watch, both birds suspend belief.

WHAT PIERO SAW (B)

(B) FLORENTINE ARTISTIC INFLUENCES ON PIERO'S WORK

Piero della Francesca was not just looking at painters while he was in Florence. In the two years he worked there, 1439-1441, he absorbed visual stimuli from sculpture, architecture, and painting. He is never documented in Florence again, at least to produce works of art, but  he carries with him through the whole of his artistic life, in Borgo San Sepolcro, Arezzo, Urbino, Rimini, Monterchi, the seeds of what art was as it was created in the great excitement nest of 1440 Florence. Even if he never documents in his treatises or elsewhere the art he was exposed to in that period, we know he saw things just by their inclusion in his own paintings.
What did he see, then?
SCULPTURE:

Donatello's tomb of Pope John the XXIII (the Antipope) provided the open curtained tent for three of Piero's works:

Madonna della Misericordia, 1445-1462, Borgo San Sepolcro
Dream of Constantine, 1450's, San Francesco, Arezzo
Madonna del Parto, after 1457, orig. Santa Maria di Momentana,   
                                                            Monterchi 

 

The literal protection over the dead body of the pope in Donatello's design is transformed by Piero into painted cloth-covered protection in death provided by Christian belief. Piero even includes in all three works Donatello's symmetrical bas-relief angels on the sarcophagus below the pope's body, and his virtue figures below them.

 
In the Misericordia the virtues are changed to the kneeling members of the Confraternity of the Misericordia who commissioned the painting, members who include the artist himself looking up next to the figure wearing the black hood (worn by Misericordia members even today).

In the Constantine scene, the angels and virtues are changed to soldiers guarding Constantine while he is visited by the angel with cross who converts him to Christianity.

In the Madonna del Parto, the symmetrical angels stand up and hold the curtain on either side of the Madonna (they are identical twins but reversed, probably from a pounced drawing that was just turned over for reuse.)
                     

The Donatello tomb sculpture is also one of the sources for the shell niche in Piero's Brera Madonna of 1472-74.

The head of the Madonna is moved below the shell niche and the stretched-out body of the pope becomes the body of the Christ child lying on his mother's lap. Piero's shell is deeper than that of Donatello's, though, and more clearly a scallop shell. Other sources for the Brera shell are Brunelleschi's sculptural green and white marble shells in the tribune niches of the Florentine Duomo

 

and the shells in the niches of the intarsia of the North Sacristy:

 

Piero turns Brunelleschi's shell upside down to make it his own creation. His ideas, though, are guided by what is au courant in Florence around 1440. Donatello and Brunelleschi are only two of the shapers of his consciousness. Blog C for What Piero Saw will give other examples of Florentine influence in Piero's work.

WHAT PIERO SAW (A)

What Piero della Francesca saw in Florence in 1439-1441


Piero della Francesca begins his artistic career at age 17 in Borgo San Sepolcro, his birthplace. From 1432 to 1438 he is apprenticed to a painter there. At age 24 he takes a Junior Year Abroad, facetiously and futuristically speaking, and goes off to Florence to study the art of the Great Masters he has probably heard much about in Borgo. From age 24 to 26, 1439-1441, he has a job with Domenico Veneziano in Florence, painting frescoes for the now-lost church of Sant’Egidio. During that formative period in his artistic career he not only absorbs all the lessons about light

 

Domenico Veneziano, 1445, St. Lucy Altarpiece, orig. for Santa Lucia dei Magnoli, Florence. (Uffizi)

Piero, Sheba Kneeling, Legend of the True Cross,San Francesco Arezzo, 1452-66.

that Domenico has to teach him, but he also views and is influenced by most of the major artists either living in the city or recently passed out of it. I will devote several blogs to the discussion of Piero's Florentine training and inspiration. For this entry, 
A) Who are the artists he would have encountered in Florence?
For the subsequent entries,B,C,D, and E - Where does their influence show up in his painting?

A) LIVING ARTISTS in Florence in 1439-1441

Who, besides Veneziano, was in Florence and still working in 1439?

Leon Battista Alberti, the architect, was back in the city after having been in exile until 1428. He had written his treatise on Painting in 1435 in Latin, reprinted it in Italian in 1436, and was writing his treatises on Architecture and Sculpture. Of the men Alberti mentions in his dedication to Della Pittura, 4 of 5 were still alive and working in the city:

Brunelleschi (1377-1446)  had just finished the Dome of the Florence Cathedral three years before, in 1436, 
and was working on the lantern for the Dome. He had completed all but the facade of the church of San Lorenzo (1421-1440), and his church of Santo Spirito was in construction. 
 

Available for public viewing in 1439-1441 were also the arches and columns of Brunelleschi’s Ospedale degl’Innocenti begun in 1419.

Donatello (1386-1466)  was in the city from 1439-1441. His Sts. Mark and George, 1411 and 1417 respectively, were visible in outside niches on Orsanmichele,

and inside the Baptistery (open to baptized Christians) was his tomb (1419-1420) of Pope John the XXIII, the Antipope. His marble David of 1408 and his prophet figures for the Campanile could have been seen. His 1430 bronze David was probably in the private courtyard of the Medici Palace, but Piero must have known these.

 

The Cantoria he sculpts for the Cathedral would be finished in the year Piero arrives.

Luca della Robbia (1399/1400-1482) was alive and working in Florence.

His 7-year opus of the Cantoria for the Cathedral had just been completed in 1438, one year before Piero comes to the city.

The reliefs Luca produces for the sacristy doors of the Cathedral were not constructed until 1445-46, but it is possible that Piero saw preparatory drawings or early molds for these during the time he spent in Florence. The subject of one of those is the Resurrection, a subject treated later by Piero (1455-65).

Ghiberti (1378-1455), had installed his public bronze panels for the North Door of the Baptistery between 1403 and 1425 and had begun the second set for the East Door in 1425. By 1439 he would have been halfway through the project that was finished in 1452. Since the Solomon and Sheba panel was the last to be completed, it is unlikely that Piero saw it between 1439 and 1441.                                   

RECENTLY DECEASED ARTIST in Florence mentioned by Alberti

Masaccio leaves Florence in 1428 and dies in the same year in Rome, but his Brancacci Chapel frescoes in Santa Maria del Carmine (1424-27) remain in Florence as his visual legacy, and certainly Piero would have seen them. Masaccio is the only artist Alberti mentions who is no longer working in the city in 1439.

ARTISTS in FLORENCE IN 1439-1441 not mentioned by ALBERTI:

Fra Angelico had begun his work for the monastery of San Marco

by 1438 and his Annunciation would have been visible at the top of the staircase entrance to the cells, but would Piero have visited a monk living there and been able to view that image? 

The altarpiece for the main church of San Marco, completed in 1445 by Angelico, might have been a work in progress, but would Piero have seen that? 

Fra Filippo Lippi was working on the Annunciation for the church of San Lorenzo in 1440; Piero could have viewed it before he left in 1441.

The Pollaiuolo Brothers were alive and well and working during that period; their most important project for the church of San Miniato al Monte, the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal, was not begun until 1460 and finished in 1466, so it is unlikely the drawings for that were available as early as 1441. Piero may have known of the Pollaiuolos’ Hercules in paint and bronze,

since Piero later chooses to produce a self-portrait as Hercules in his own home (now in the Gardner Museum in Boston), but his image is so different from those of the Pollaiuoli that one wonders if he heard about the subject but never saw their renditions. Piero had

his own reasons for painting himself as Hercules besides. His mother’s birthplace was Monterchi (Monte Ercole, the mount of Hercules). He may have made the painting in acknowledgement of this family connection; the link with the Pollaiuoli is harder to prove.

Uccello’s Cathedral fresco of 1436 was visible; the condottiero Giovanni Acuto’s image might have had an influence on Piero’s images of fighting men later. 

Uccello’s private commissions for the Salimbeni family on the subject  of the Battle of San Romano may have been seen by Piero but they were not begun until 1435 and not finished until 1460; certainly preparatory drawings might have been available from Uccello’s workshop.

       In the next entries (B,C, D, E) I will zero in on particular artists' works and show their reflection in Piero's paintings. These images would not have been the only influences on him, perhaps, and the influences may have walked a two-way street (Piero may have had an effect on the Florentine artists who saw his Sant' Egidio frescoes), but when we explore the Florentine oeuvre of the period, we can find definite visual links. I will set out a few examples by masters of sculpture, painting, and architecture from which Piero has chosen to imitate motifs.