by Larry Witham
19.Edgerton, The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope, 39. As an artisan, Brunelleschi became familiar with Euclid’s geometry. He also learned the way Roman builders used a “plan and elevation” drawing system, and he had seen how mirrors were helpful in drawing or copying geometrical objects (by visually flattening them). There may have been earlier developments than Brunelleschi, as in the work of the Florentine mathematician Paolo Toscanelli (1397-1482), a leader of the humanists, who had summarized medieval optics in an early treatise titled Della prospettiva. See Hubert Damisch, The Origin of Perspective, trans. John Goodman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 71. Damisch suggests that Brunelleschi might have figured out perspective by trial and error and only later learned geometry from Toscanelli, perhaps in Padua.
20.Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi, ed. Howard Saalman, trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970), 42 (English), 43 (Italian).
21.As the Manetti account goes, Brunelleschi showed his painting to friends in a particular way that made the story so memorable. Already in his day, the humanists in Rome and Florence were entertaining themselves with devices such as peep-hole-boxes or the pin-hole camera obscura, which casts an upside-down image on the back of a darkened box. Now, Brunelleschi showed them a different device, as it were, for viewing his painting of the Baptistery. He directed them, from the backside of the painted panel, to look with one eye through a small hole, and thus see the front of the painted panel in an adjacent mirror. The double effect—the one-eye viewpoint and the shimmering of a mirror—reportedly created a remarkable visual sensation of depth.
22.Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi, 42.
23.Stephen R. Wassell, “Commentary on Elements of Painting,” in The Mathematical Works of Leon Battista Alberti, 153. In On Painting, Alberti does mention the term “centric point,” but “distance point” is a term invented later.
24.Alberti, On Painting, 65.
25.Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, ed. and trans. Thereza Wells (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 113.
26.Alberti, On Painting, 41.
27.Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 92-93.
28.Traversari, quoted in Ibid., 118.
29.Quoted in English in Piero Bianconi, All the Paintings of Piero Della Francesca, trans. Paul Colacicchi (New York: Hawthorn, 1962), 11. In Italian see Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca, vol. 2 (Milan: Istituto editoriale italiano, 1971), 219.
30.Domenico, quoted in Helmut Wohl, The Paintings of Domenico Veneziano: A Study of Florentine Art of the Early Renaissance (New York: New York University Press, 1980), 15. Domenico’s payments for the Sant’ Egidio frescos were doled out between September 1439 and 1445.
31.This simple word, “with,” illustrates the dilemma for art historians interpreting Piero’s life. Though Piero was “with” Domenico on the day he showed up for a payment, for example, it does not prove that Piero actually worked with him on any frescos. The convention, however, has been to presume that he did; and from that small citation has been built the much larger case that Piero did his apprenticeship in Florence, was a young assistant to Domenico Veneziano, and roamed Florence extensively.
32.Wohl suggests that Domenico most likely was born in Venice in 1410, which is close to the 1412 date for Piero’s birth (adopted in this book). For Domenico’s career and influence on Piero, I have followed Wohl’s reassessment. See Wohl, The Paintings of Domenico Veneziano, 20-21.
33.Alberti, On Painting, 61.
34.Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, ed. John O’Meara, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1984), 304. Petrarch, quoted in Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), 15. He cites Petrarch’s Triumphs, chapter three.
35.See Jonathan Harris, The End of Byzantium (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), Jonathan Harris, Greek Emigres in the West, 1400-1520 (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1995), and his Internet essay, “Byzantines in Renaissance Italy” at: (http:www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html); Katerina Ierodiakonou, ed., Byzantine Philosophy and Its Ancient Sources (New York: Clarendon, 2002), 1-30; John Monfasani, Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy: Cardinal Bessarion and Other Emigres (London: Ashgate/Variorum, 1995); and N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
36.I will emphasize again the “speculative” nature of this account of Piero, the Baptism, and his journey to Florence. At minimum, there is good circumstantial evidence to date the commissioning of the painting to 1438 (see Banker, CSS, 226-36, 253-56), after which Piero traveled to Florence. The only enigma is the stovepipe hat that Piero paints on one of the men in the background of the Baptism, which, according to scholarly opinion, he could not have painted unless he had seen the Greek Orthodox costumes at the Council of Florence. My solution is to have Piero travel during the period, see the costumes, and then complete the painting. In art history, this has been called a “hypothesis,” which, in a strict science, means an idea that can be tested in various ways to determine its truth or falsity. Unfortunately, no tests are possible with art-historical topics that lack data. Judgments often arise from the sheer instincts of the expert or connoisseur. In the end, most hypotheses about Piero are simply speculation. So, herewith, I have felt free to offer my speculative scenario on what Piero might have done in the years 1438 and 1439.
37.See Piero’s method in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 168-70; and Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, “Piero Della Francesca’s Process: Panel Painting Technique,” in Contributions to the Dublin Congress, 7-11 September 1998: Painting Techniques: History, Materials and Studio Practice, ed. Ashok Roy and Perry Smith (London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1998), 92. Modern research has shown that Piero changed the positioning of the angels, for example.
38.See Richard Cocke, “Piero della Francesca and the Development of Italian Landscape Painting,” Burlington Magazine 122 (September 1980): 626-28, 631.
39.Euclid combines a pentagon, triangle, and circle in book 4, proposition 16 of Elements. For a full and elaborate interpretation see B. A. R. Carter, “A Mathematical Interpretation of Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ,” appendix I, in Lavin, Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ, 149-63.
40.See John Shearman, “Refraction, and Reflection,” in Lavin, PFL, 213-20. On this optical problem faced by Piero in the Baptism see also Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 128; and Martin Kemp, “New Light on Old Theories: Piero’s Studies of the Transmission of Light,” in Emiliani, PDFSA, 40-42.
41.Banker, CSS, 164.
CHAPTER 3
1.Quoted in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca (New York: Phaidon, 2002), 30.
2.See Diane Cole Ahl, “The Misericordia Polyptych: Reflections on Spiritual and Visual Culture in Sansepolcro,” in The Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca, ed. Jeryldene M. Wood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 14-29; and James R. Banker, “The Altarpiece of the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Borgo Sansepolcro,” in Lavin, PFL, 21-35.
3.Contract quoted in David S. Chambers, ed., Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), 52-53. The requirement to check the work for ten years suggests that Piero was trying some new techniques, such as oil.
4.Quoted in Creighton Gilbert, Change in Piero della Francesca (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1968), 17. Piero was not unusual in his trouble managing commissions, as was seen in the case
of Antonio Anghiari. Piero may have shirked the Misericordia job because the Pichi heirs were late in payment, turning Piero’s interests to other projects in other towns. In his career, it does not seem that Piero ever failed to deliver. But his modus operandi—and perhaps his reputation—was to take on too many projects, which led to delays. These great lapses in his projects have undermined attempts to track him, but they also leave open many speculative possibilities on his travels and activities.
5.Banker, “The Altarpiece of the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia,” 26, 27.
6.Ibid., 27. On the two stages see also Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, “Piero Della Francesca’s Process: Panel Painting Technique,” in Contributions to the Dublin Congress, 7-11 September 1998: Painting Techniques: History, Materials and Studio Practice, ed. Ashok Roy and Perry Smith (London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1998), 91. These scholars suggest that Piero was experimenting with oil paint by the time he finished the Misericordia, showing an “inexpert” use of oil that caused the painting to wrinkle and crack over time. This inexpert use of oil is similar to the fate of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper fresco, in which his experimental mixing of oil and tempera doomed much of the painting to flake away.
7.Banker, “The Altarpiece of the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia,” 22-23. More exactly, the altarpiece measures 8 feet 9 inches tall and 10 feet 5 inches wide, or 273 cm by 323 cm.
8.Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 1, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York: Abrams, 1979), 472. For new evidence of Piero in Ancona see Nathan Silver, Piero della Francesca in America: From Sansepolcro to the East Coast (New York: The Frick Collection, 2013), 45 n.70. Meanwhile, Piero is documented as being in Sansepolcro on just two occasions between 1438 and 1449.
9.See Carlo Ginzburg, The Enigma of Piero: Piero della Francesca, new edition, trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper (London: Verso, 2002 [1985]), 23-24, 27, 45.
10.Denys Hay, The Italian Renaissance in Its Historical Background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 155-57, 164.
11.On “architectural humanism” see André Chastel, The Flowering of the Italian Renaissance, trans. Jonathan Griffin (New York: Odyssey Press, 1965), 41-44.
12.Scholars note that while Vasari’s Lives says that Piero worked for Borso Este, he more likely had arrived in Ferrara to work for Lionello Este just before Borso rose to power.
13.Filippo Pedrocco, The Art of Venice: From its Origins to 1797 (New York: Riverside/Scala, 2002), 41.
14.On Venice see Longhi, PDF, 86, 100; and Aldolfo Venturi, Piero Della Francesca (Firenze: Presso Giorgio and Piero Alinari, 1922), 67.
15.Antonio Averlino Filarete, Treatise on Architecture, vol. 1, ed. John R. Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965), 116. Filarete was an architect and goldsmith from Florence. He designed his ideal city based on Plato’s Laws.
16.The following scholars have all argued for Piero’s influence on northern Italy: Luigi Lanzi, Joseph A. Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Roberto Longhi, Aldolfo Venturi, Kenneth Clark, and André Chastel. See Joseph A. Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy: From the II to the XVI Century, The Florentine, Umbrian, and Sienese Schools of the XV Century, vol. 3 (London: J. M. Dent, 1909 [1864]), 19; Longhi, PDF, 81-82, 86, 100, 140; Venturi, Piero Della Francesca, 67; Kenneth Clark, Piero della Francesca (London: Phaidon, 1951), 11, 14 (Clark speaks of Piero’s “Ferrarese and North Italian followers”); and Chastel, The Studios and Styles of the Renaissance, 1460-1500 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966), 189-92.
17.Jill Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; London: National Gallery Publications, 1991), 197.
18.Bellucci and Frosinini, “Piero Della Francesca’s Process,” 92. These scholars suggest that a 1458 legal document in which Piero left his estate in the hands of his brother Marco suggested, as in such documents of the time, that he had taken a risky journey abroad—perhaps to the Netherlands to see how oil painting was done. Others argue that the 1458 docment covered Piero on his overland journey to paint in Rome.
19.Dunkerton, Giotto to Dürer, 198. Piero’s use of oil has been inferred from the way his paintings, including the Misericordia Altarpiece, wrinkled and cracked over the centuries.
20.The transmission of perspective from Italy to the north has been much debated since Erwin Panofsky argued for the distinction between Italian “mathematical” perspective and northern “empirical” approaches, culminating in the methods of Albrecht Dürer. See Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 59, 62-63, further discussed in James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 88. In opposition to the Panofsky thesis, Kim Veltman has argued that Piero, as a representative Italian, would have developed both a theoretical and a practical method, and both of these were likely to have been transmitted north to people such as Dürer. See Kim Veltman, “Piero della Francesca and the Two Methods of Renaissance Perspective,” in Emiliani, PDFSA, 407-19.
21.For a summary of these achievements see Martin Kemp, “New Light on Old Theories: Piero’s Studies of the Transmission of Light,” in Emiliani, PDFSA, 33-45.
22.For Alberti’s Platonism see John Hendrix, Platonic Architectonics: Platonic Philosophies and the Visual Arts (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 97-148.
23.Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 64, 65.
24.Alberti, quoted in Philip Hendy, Piero della Francesca and the Early Renaissance (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 62.
25.Alberti, On Painting, 75.
26.Christine Smith, “Piero’s Painted Architecture: Analysis of His Vocabulary,” in Lavin, PFL, 249.
27.Ibid., 248.
28.Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca (New York: Phaidon, 2002), 54-55.
29.Alberti, quoted in Maria Grazia Pernis and Laurie Schneider Adams, Federico da Montefeltro & Sigismondo Malatesta: The Eagle and the Elephant (New York: P. Lang, 1996), 59.
30.Quoted in Lavin, Piero della Francesca, 75.
31.Ibid., 64.
32.Quoted in Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, The Art of Fresco Painting as Practised by the Old Italian and Spanish Masters (London: Charles Gilpin, 1846), 113.
33.It has been argued that Piero’s two methods for perspective are the basis for his latter-day work, On Perspective, illustrating how he put it into practice many years before he wrote it down as an instructional theory. This two-part application of perspective would also apply to his much larger fresco project in Arezzo. See Veltman, “Piero della Francesca and the Two Methods of Renaissance Perspective,” 418.
34.The idea that Piero used “a little oil” to paint the green leaves on the trees in the Baptism comes from analysis of the painting by its owners at the National Gallery, and presumes a much later date for the Baptism than this book’s hypothesis of 1438-39. See Dunkerton, Giotto to Dürer, 198.
35.Piero’s other portrait of Sigismondo, done in tempera and oil and measuring just shy of 18 x 14 inches on a panel, has been disputed as original. Roberto Longhi made the definitive assessment of authenticity and dated it to 1450, the time of the Rimini fresco. It was purchased by the Louvre in 1978, the one authenticated Piero painting in that museum (although reputed Pieros had been purchased before).
36.Quoted in Judith V. Field, Piero Della Francesca: A Mathematician’s Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 30.
37.Ibid., 17, 19.
38.Piero offers no hint of his philosophical views about numbers, so this comes only by inference. For some suggestions see Hendrix, Platonic Architectonics, 149-73.
&n
bsp; 39.Quoted in Field, Piero Della Francesca: A Mathematician’s Art, 17.
40.There is no way to date the Abacus Treatise. Some scholars date it late, close to Piero’s last two treatises, while others suggest it was an earlier project, isolated from his later work. Either way, the presumed original is in the Laurentian Library in Florence, a handwritten manuscript of 170 small octavo leaves.
41.Lyle Massey, ed., The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished (Washington, D.C., and New Haven, CT: National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 2003).
42.Euclid, quoted in Euclid’s Elements: All Thirteen Books Complete in One Volume, ed. Dana Densmore, trans. Thomas L. Heath (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Press, 2002), 367.
43.Piero cites Euclid twelve times in the Abacus Treatise, eleven times in On Perspective, and fifty-two times in Five Regular Solids. He refers to Euclid’s Optics four times solely in On Perspective. For this count see Menso Folkerts, “Piero della Francesca and Euclid,” in Emiliani, PDFSA, 300.
44.Marshall Clagett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978), 385. Clagett and others note that Piero was probably repeating what he had seen in medieval commentaries, not directly from a text of Archimedes. He may have come in contact with such a direct Archimedan text in Rome in 1458-59, well after he began writing the Abacus Treatise.
