A WATSONWORKS publication

In association with the Piero della Francesca Society

(UK/Kent)

PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA:

A Journey through his art

James Watson

Seeing Piero’s landscape and figures in their native

Umbrian home.

The country wife is the Madonna of Pity, the farm girl carrying
her basket of eggs is the Mary Magdalene and the boy riding his
brand new bicycle comes straight from holding the Madonna’s
cornucopia. You suddenly understand some of the mysteries
that surround the work of Piero della Francesca when you
wander among the hills that were his home and the people who
were his models.

Recently I travelled through the Valtiburina seeing, in towns and

villages in southern Tuscany and Umbria, the work of Piero in its
proper setting. In London, the figures and landscapes of The
Baptism of Christ and The Nativity are a tremendous pleasure,
but they are also a mystery without clues.
You see the calm, clear landscape of these works and then too
suddenly you must walk out into the resounding traffic of
Trafalgar Square; but in Arezzo, in the silence of the church of
San Francesco, you see rivers, like strips of sky, cutting through
hills darkened with plane trees and cypress, and then you step
outside, walk up to the Prato, the parkland behind the cathedral,
and there unfolding before you are the hills and valleys you
have just seen in paint.

An association felt
All at once you begin to feel an association, life with art, nature
with art which is totally absent in London. You feel you are
‘getting somewhere’ just as if the artist were explaining his work
to you. You are beginning to break down the colossal
impassivity that is Piero’s.

In 1454 Piero della Francesca was summoned to Arezzo to

continue work by Bicci di Lorenzo in the church of San
Francesco. He came with a high reputation for his work in his
home town of Sansepolcro in the upper valley of the Tiber, and
in Urbino, Rimini and Ferrara.

In the apse of the church he illustrated The Legend of the True

Cross with a number of works which rank among the great
masterpieces of western art, the most famous among them
being The Death and Burial of Adam, The Battle of Milvian
Bridge, The Meeting of the Queen of Sheba with King Solomon
and The Dream of Constantine.
Legend of the True Cross, San Francesco, Arezzo.
The Queen of Sheba in adoration of the Wood.

Here is Piero at his most representative, where the homogenous

remoteness of his characters is on the most heroic scale,
baffling the searcher after ‘intimacy’ and ‘meaning’. But I had
already established a point of contact looking out over the
Prato: the landscape is rich, it is crystal clear, but it is also
severe, and in that severity one feels a certain indifference to
time and change.

These are characteristics we associate with Piero, and it helps us

a little to discover something of his original inspiration.
By bus to Sansepolcro
if the landscape could help us, so could the people. Under a
burning autumn sun I set out by bus for Sansepolcro, a dismal
town in a dust-bowl of the hills, noteworthy only for being the
possessor of The Resurrection by Piero (1).

The bus was full of farmers’ wives and daughters having sold
their produce in Arezzo’s Piazza Grande. They were brown as
the earth, strapping women without delicacy, and in their faces I
saw, with the surprise of unexpected recognition, the features of
the Queen of Sheba and her attendants or of the Madonna of
the Annunciation. I no longer felt that Piero was an
unapproachable enigma.

In front of The Resurrection in the rather depressing Pinacoteca

Communale I was once more able to make associations between
the massive strength and austerity of Christ, between the
soldiers lying at the foot of the tomb, and the men I had seen
strolling in the sunlight only a few minutes before.

There were the same deep-set eyes, heavy eyelids, and thick,
sensual lips. It was as if the world of Piero had come alive, as if
two immortalities, the real and Piero’s, were existing side by
side, each one a supplement to the other.

Village home of Piero’s mother

Monterchi is a fortified village on the border of Umbria. Half a
mile away across fields rich with vines and olives is a tiny chapel
next to a cemetery. In this chapel is a single work, The Madonna
of the Birth (2), her cloak held by angels. The Madonna’s face
(as is that of the Madonna and Child in Urbino and the Madonna
and Son in Perugia) is stern, proud, substantial; it is the face of
a woman of the fields where determination and strength
counted (and still do) for more than ethereal grace.

They are simple people, these characters of Piero’s as are the

real people. Yet they are in harmony with the impassive
landscape, adorned with its dignity.

Complete silence
The sunlight entered the open chapel door. There was complete
silence and as I looked at this solitary, glowing masterpiece, I
thought that this was the way to love art, to see it after the
effort of pilgrimage, and to see it in the surroundings in which,
and for which, it was painted.
Detail, The Madonna del Parto, Monterchi; the angel to
the left of the picture is ‘twinned’ with the angel on the
right, only posed in reverse. This figure wears a green
gown and brown stockings, the angel to the right a
brown gown and green stockings. Piero was a great
economiser!
From Monterchi I walked along the dry, hot road to Valle where
I drank the local wine. There, playing cards or billiards,
quarrelling at the tables, or leaning on the bar counter, were the
soldiers straight from the Battle of Heraclius Against Chosroes;
there was the servant and the attending guard of The Dream of
Constantine; even an Adam sitting in a corner, a little tiddly.

I went on to Urbino to see the magnificent Flagellation and

finished up in Rimini to see in the tiny side-chapel of Alberti’s
temple to Sigismondo Malatesta, the now fading Malatesta
Kneeling to St. Sigismund. I felt myself no longer a stranger to
the mystery of Piero: I felt there was no mystery.

This enduring homogeneity of the Umbrian people is one of the

clues to Piero’s remoteness. He was one of them. He sprang
from a peasantry existing in a landscape that hardly seems
subject to the changing of the seasons and, though beautiful,
presents a constant challenge.

Always on guard
The life of these people is hard. There is no ‘easy’ season and
they are always on their guard, which explains their aloofness,
their austerity and their uncommitedness. It bestows on them
the aura of mystery and, clothed in that mystery, they appear
as heroes.

This quality was inherent in Piero himself, and it was this which
he revered and portrayed as an artist. In his work there is no
expression of joy, of sudden emotion of any kind, for where
survival is a relentless problem the present is only part of a
continuous struggle and therefore indistinct from past and
future.

Once the momentary passion is banished, the resulting

impression in these circumstances – if the subject has strength
and resilience as all Piero’s subjects have – is dignity and
grandeur.

I believe that it is only when Piero della Francesca is seen in

landscape that one can really understand his preoccupation with
geometry (the abstracting process) and his superb objectivity
through self-effacement, the first being the servant of the
second.

Yet, if his impassivity were a unique phenomenon the mystery

would remain. That it does not can be proved by walking the
hills and valleys of Umbria and looking into the faces of its
people.
 ***

The above article was published in The Times on 29

November, 1961, with the heading Old Master at Home,
and ‘From A Correspondent’. It was written following a
year the author spent teaching English at the British
Council Institute in Milan, and marks a lifetime’s
fascination with the work of Piero della Francesca
(1416/17-1492).

Since then James has revisited Piero’s work in Italy on

several occasions. He has written a Summary Paper on
the artist, a text of which will be posted on Scribd.com.

The fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross in San

Francesco was renovated between 1991 and 1997. As a
result of Project Piero the artist’s masterpiece is as fresh
and magnificent as it must have looked when he
completed the work, probably in 1462.

Recent photographs have been added to the posting.

Notes
1. Not mentioned in the article, though a centrepiece of the
Sansepolcro art gallery is Piero’s Polyptych of the Misericordia,
one of several masterly altarpieces painted by the artist. Since
the author’s first visit, the town of Sansepolcro has smartened
itself up, without losing its Renaissance traditions; and the
Pinacoteca is a pleasure to visit.

2. Monterchi was the birthplace of Piero’s mother, Romana di

Perino, and the Madonna of the Birth (del Parto) may have been
painted in her memory. Visitors to Monterchi will no longer be
able search out the cemetery chapel that housed the Madonna.
Restored in 1993, the painting has a museum to itself, a
converted church in Monterchi’s Via della Reglia.

Today it is shorn of its frame and enclosed in protective glass in

a light-dimmed chamber. It remains moving and impressive, but
what is absent is the cocoon-like intimacy which the original
chapel and frame made possible.

After a visit to the new location of the Madonna of the Birth, the
author wrote: The question arises as to really how much of the
original survives the restoration. According to accompanying
photos in the exhibition, there had been much fading.
A further note said: Suddenly, after seven days, I saw a Piero
face. Forty years ago there were plenty; this time, only one: a
girl with Piero eyes, Piero head and, most tellingly of all, a Piero
mouth. It was in the foyer of the Astoria Hotel. I thought – at
last!

Until, that is, the father of the girl was asked whether he knew
Arezzo. He said No. Ah! But then, as the girl was here to study
at the university, surely this was a Piero face of the future.
Would she, I wondered, once she had settled in the land of
Piero, begin to recognise a little of herself in the Madonna del
Parto?

Sleeping soldier, The Resurrection, Pinacoteca

Communale, Sansepolcro. Some art historians believe
this might be a Piero self-portrait.
This posting is dedicated to my good friend Dennis
Chamberlin (1930-2009). We shared a love of art,
literature, Italian culture and cricket. He will be deeply
missed.

James Watson has written widely on art and media. He is

also author of several novels and plays for Young Adults.
His latest story is Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa (Spire
Paperback, ISBN 1-897312-72-5, £7.99, possibly cheaper
from Amazon).

Further information about the author can be found on his

website, Watsonworks.co.uk and he can be contacted on
Watsonworks@hotmail.co.uk.

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