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.

ADVICE for 1st-time visitors to ITALY

ITALY for first-time visitors

 ITALY IS AN AESTHETIC CULTURE, not an efficiency culture as ours is. What difference does that make, you will ask?

1) DRESS and COLOR: It means Italians are not interested in whether something works fast and well, as we are; they are interested in whether something is beautiful. The reason for living for an Italian is to make life beautiful. Consequently, Italians value the way people are dressed in public much more highly than we do; their expression “fare la bella figura” (to make the beautiful figure) is used to describe the way one presents oneself on the street, and sloppiness or casual dress is frowned upon. Americans should be aware that they can even offend Italians if they wear bright colors and tennis shoes in town or at tourist spots (darker colors are thought to be more serious, as life is, and tennis shoes are considered appropriate only on the tennis court.) Decorum is especially important in churches: you can be kept out of Italian churches if you wear sleeveless blouses or short skirts; shoulders and knees must be covered.
What seems to us a superficial concern, appearance, is how they make their living. It is also why people flock to Italy to be nourished by the beauty created there. Italian design imbues all aspects of life: the way shop windows are set up, the way meats and deli foods are displayed, the way people dress up to go out in public, the way the coffee bar man swirls the milk of the cappuccino. It can manifest itself even in the color clothing people wear: usually one color is “in” for the year and Italians usually know which it is and make sure that they conform to the wearing of that color; foreigners who are unaware of that will be easily spotted as foreigners. (*You can figure out the color by noting which color appears most often in the window displays; one year I remember it was black and every woman wore a black dress on the street; one year it was purple, another beige.)
WORKING HOURS and the– PASSEGGIATA – An aesthetic culture means that shops are not always open during the hours posted; it’s more important for the shop owner to be out making the “bella figura” than to honor the hours on the sign. It also means that if you expect to look quickly through a shop for ten minutes, the shop owner will want to show you the best wares and those should be appreciated for their aesthetic value, which takes time, not possible in an efficiency browse.
You should expect that if you ask for a gift to be wrapped in a shop, even just to take out into the street, that time and attention will be required to admire the aesthetic way in which the gift is tidily packaged by the salesperson. Even if you buy wrapping paper, it will be wrapped for carrying in public! The shop owner will not understand if you are anxious to get away; s/he is not concerned with efficiency but with whether his/her or your own sense of the aesthetic life has been satisfied; that’s why Italians are always late to appointments; it’s more important to be seen in full dress for as long as it takes to be appreciated than it is to be on time somewhere. If you want to see Italians displaying their aesthetics, take a walk around 4 in the afternoon when they are out for their “passeggiata.” (the family stroll through town.) You will see people dressed up, laughing and talking as they walk slowly just enjoying the relaxing time between the siesta(2-3) and when they go back to work (4-7), (Italian time 5-8) . So the period 4-6 each day regarded as wasted in American Puritanical eyes is essential for the beauty of life for an Italian.
Even going to the post office or the bank can take hours because the point is not to get through quickly with stamps and packages mailed; the point is to watch the aesthetic way in which the teller counts out the money or the pleasing way in which the post office man pounds his dating stamp or lays out the beautiful stamps on the counter. If you go in expecting efficiency, you will only be frustrated. (Hours of operation are usually 8-12 and 4-7, but some museums and offices are only open 8-12.)
2) PUBLIC vs. PRIVATE LIFE - You should never carry anything, groceries, shoes for repair, cleaning, anything, in the street without putting it/them into a bag. Things need covering in public because an Italian never wants to offend the eyes of the other people in the street, or to be offended himself. So you will rarely see an Italian eating as they are walking out in public; even gelato usually gets eaten indoors. The chance that someone might be publicly offended by unwrapped shoes, unwrapped food, or even unwrapped gift-wrap is a sensitivity developed over many years in their aesthetic culture. They regard life as an aesthetic endeavor and if they err in the carrying out of that premise, they think it almost as immoral as we might a social crime. Many of our students used to get vicious looks for eating hamburgers on the run, an act of betrayal.
Consequently, the experience of Italy can be enhanced if you go into the society without American expectations and just enjoy the aesthetic experiences as they roll by you: the shoes and belts of the passersby, the display windows of shops (especially in Florence), the proper way a waiter serves the “fish soup”, “zuppa di pesce” or pasta, the way people have planted window boxes whose flowers cascade down the walls, the various greens in the scenery: silver-green of olive tree leaves, the dark green of the cypresses, the yellow-green of the vineyard leaves, the beautifully made leather and silver and mosaic inlays, not to mention all the artwork in the shops and museums and the food presented at table.
In Rome have a granita di caffe near the Pantheon at the Tazza d’Oro; in Florence have a pastry and caffe macchiato at the bar Gilli in piazza della Repubblica, a hot chocolate at Rivoire’s in Piazza Signoria, in Venice have a “zuppa di pesce” at the Taverna di San Trovaso near the Accademia Museum; have a Bellini drink at the Caffe Florian in Piazza San Marco. Take in the art of beauty that Italians know how to create. “Beauty is nourishment,” I always told my students. No better place to get nourished than Italy.
3 CITIES:
ROME: Walking in Rome, except around the Pantheon, is like trying to walk in L.A.-excruciating because the place is huge; take an American Express tour bus ride for major sights; otherwise take a cab. Public buses and the metro are rife with gypsies and pickpockets.
ART: Must-sees: – SISTINE CEILING and St. Peter’s
                                   FORUM and COLOSSEUM
                                   PANTHEON
From Pantheon walk to the nearby church of San Luigi dei Francesi (for Caravaggio’s paintings of the life of St. Matthew) and then on to Piazza Navona; or at night, walk from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain or Spanish Steps. If you want ancient art, walk from Pantheon to Capitoline museums housing bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius and Boy Pulling Thorn out of his foot  (Spinario). Otherwise take a bus tour.
If you have time: Galleria Borghese(tickets ahead) for Bernini’s statues of 1)David and 2) Apollo and Daphne (check out Daphne’s feet turning into tree roots).
For Baroque architecture a must-see is San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane by Borromini. Take a cab- Borghese and San Carlo both too far to walk. Or see Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria, also by cab.
FOOD:
Good pizza on Via Arenula (no sign, two blocks or so from river on left)
Good restaurants in the Campo dei Fiori
Good restaurant for the Roman specialty of Carciofi alla Giudea (Judean artichokes) – OTTAVIA
Good restaurant in the Trastevere area: DA MEO PATACCA (singing waiters and shows and outdoor tables)
Good outdoor restaurant called VECCHIA ROMA in Piazza Campitelli (between the Capitoline Hill and the river)
Good restaurant near Piazza Navona: DA EUSTACHIO
3 Scalini in Piazza Navona has great chocolate truffle ice cream
Tazza d’oro near Pantheon for granita di caffe
FLORENCE:
ART: 4 must-sees: MICHELANGELO’S REAL DAVID in the Accademia Museum
                                   (book tickets online ahead of time)
                             BOTTICELLI’S PRIMAVERA and BIRTH OF VENUS (both in the same room in the Uffizi Galleria (Uffizi museum), also best visited with tickets ordered ahead)
                             View from PIAZZALE MICHELANGELO-10-minute cab-best view of city and river.
If you have time: Baptistery interior, Duomo (interior – see the wood inlay sacristy behind altar on left or climb to top of dome for the view – c.463 steps)
Opera del Duomo (museum behind Duomo that holds one of Michelangelo’s Pietas (he did 4) and the bronze doors of the Baptistery by Ghiberti)
Medici Chapel (behind San Lorenzo) for Michelangelo’s statues of Night and Day
Medici Palace Chapel for Gozzoli’s fresco of the Procession of the Magi
Museum of San Marco for Fra Angelico’s cell paintings
Museum of Chiesa del Carmine for Masaccio's frescoes
FOOD: Breakfast – Caffe Patrizio Cosi, Borgo degli Albizi– 7 a.m. onward
             Lunch – 1:00 – (more like a dinner – can be 3 courses) – BORDINO’s over the river and up the hill left one block beyond Ponte Vecchio
             Dinner – 7 or 8 – AQUA AL DUE – Tastes of 5 different pastas for first course – you might not want a second course; Il LATINI, Via dei Palchetti, 6r(red)-Tuscan food and lots of it.
FANCY RESTAURANTS in FLORENCE:  ENOTECA PINCHIORRI, Via Ghibellina, 87
                                                               or OTTORINO, Via della Oche, 12
VENICE:
ART: 2 must-sees – EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR OF SAN MARCO exterior and interior of San Marco church – Mosaics line façade and interior walls. Visit the Pala d’Oro (10th century to 1342) behind the main altar – extra payment but worth it –thousands of jewels. Climb stairs in narthex to see the Hellenistic gilded bronze HORSES that originally stood where the copies stand now on the façade; façade walk there has good views.
 If there’s time: Church of San Zaccaria – way behind San Marco – second altarpiece on left of nave – by Giovanni Bellini (1505) – a contemplative masterpiece with St. Peter,with keys, St. Catherine with her wheel, the Madonna and Child with lute player, St. Lucy with a palm frond, symbol of martyrdom, and San Zaccaria (the father of John the Baptist, Saint Zaccharias, who is buried across from the painting.)
Palazzo Ducale with the Bridge of Sighs and prisons from which Casanova escaped
Accademia Galleria – paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Carpaccio (15 minute walk from San Marco-follow signs)
Church of the Frari masterpieces by Donatello, Bellini, and Titian.
Palladio's church of San Giorgio Maggiore (visible from Palazzo Ducale, must take boat ride across canal).
FOOD: DA RAFFAELE - on canal – take a gondola ride afterwards and pay for an accordion player and singer to accompany) La Madonna (for seafood risotto) Fenice (elegant -near the famous theater) And, of course, Taverna di San Trovaso, near Accademia Gallery, for the fish soup “zuppa di pesci”(might not be served in summer)
ISLAND: Murano to see glass-blowing factory; good outdoor restaurant in main piazza;
fabulous Giovanni Bellini painting in the church of San Pietro Martire there, but church rarely open

Be careful not to get Stendahl’s disease - presents as dizziness from seeing too much art – hospital cases reported every year in Italy, seriously!

QUICK ITALIAN PRONUNCIATION COURSE:
No word “to spell” in Italian because once you know the rules you can pronounce any Italian word :

All VOWELS are PRONOUNCED (no silent vowels as in English and French)
USUALLY the ACCENT is on the PENULTIMATE SYLLABLE

C or G followed by I or E is soft –
C or G followed by A,O, or U is hard –
Carciofi (artichokes) has first hard C hard as in CAR then a soft C as in CHOKE so “artichokes” is pronounced in Italian: Carciofi=CAR-CHO-FEE (Accent on the cho)
Godi (you enjoy) – Go-DEE, Giotto (Joh-toh)
CENTO DOLLARI (one hundred dollars) = CHAYNTO DOLL-AR-EE (accents on CHAYN and DOLL)

I is always pronounced EE
E is always pronounced long A as in the first letter of the alphabet, AY
A is always pronounced short A as in AH
Double consonants are always given emphasis – PIZZA - Peezzah

CHI or CHE is always a hard “K” sound,
Key or Kay respectively for these two words that mean “Who” or “What” in English., so the word for church, CHIESA, is pronounced “Key-AY-ZAH” with accent on the AY, but cathedral, CATTEDRALE, is pronounced CAH-TAY-DRAH-LAY (accent on the drah).

Phrases you will use most:
PER FAVORE (Please) ; PEAR– FA-VOR-AY (Accent on vor)
GRAZIE (Thank you): GRAH/ZEE-AY accent irregular- on GRAH
PREGO (You’re Welcome or to urge someone to go ahead of you in line)PRAY-GO (accent on PRAY)
SCUSI – (Excuse me) : Scoozee (accent on scoo)
QUANTO COSTA(how much does it cost?) – Quahnto – costah?

Every region in Italy has a different dialect; in Florence, for instance, they
aspirate every C to an H sound, so Coca Cola becomes “Hoha hola”, but leave regionalisms for your next trip. Italians are always happy if you try to say anything in their language.