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In the history of art we find artists, like Piero della Francesca, not so well-known to the general public, as for example Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, but when we look at their skills and originality, they should be mentioned in one breath with the other ones. His use of religious symbolism, the clarity of his colours and the way, he worked with perspectives, made him one of a kind.

Piero was born in Borgo San Sepolcro, a quainttown in southern Tuscany, around 1420. He studied art in Florence, but his career was spent in many other cities, like Rome, Urbino, Ferrara, Rimini, and Arezzo. He was strongly influenced by Masaccio and Domenico Veneziano. The solid, rounded figures, we meet with Masaccio and he has with Domenico in common the preference for delicate colours and scenes bathed in clear light. To these influences he added a sense of order and harmony. He saw the human figure as three-dimensional and the outlines of his subjects have the grace, abstraction and precision of geometric drawings. One of the leading lights of the Renaissance, Piero took the perspective obsession of Florentine masters Masaccio and Paolo Uccello and mixed it with the ethereal posed beauty of the Umbrian school to create a haunting style all his own. His backgrounds, even those of the countryside, are masterpieces in its selves. His painting has so fascinated the modern world, that the trail of cities preserving his works has become known as the Piero della Francesca Trail, a pilgrimage route for art lovers. When Piero's eyesight began to fail, later in life, he wrote his two treatises; On the Five Regular Bodies and On Perspective in Painting, which together set the rules for his universe of perspective and logic, broke down the human body into a geometric machine of perfect proportions, and became required reading for almost every Renaissance artist. He died near his hometown in 1492.

Highlights of the Piero della Francesca Trail in Tuscany

San Sepolcro

In his birthplace, Piero is something between a cultural hero and a patron saint. Every inhabitant seems to be a "della Piero" expert. The lady of a store can tell you, that Piero was the first one to paint a pregnant Madonna. Somebody else can give you a complete discourse on the man and his art. And there's a local, who every night, after his work climbs the steps of the town museum to watch through the window at some of Piero's work before heading home.

In this museum we find one of his most famous works; "the Resurrection". This work was painted for the council chamber of the town hall (in the 1400s the museum building was in fact the town hall) and has never been moved. Aldous Huxley described the Resurrection as the "greatest painting in the world," and even if you do not agree it is hard not to be impressed by this fresco. There are two points of particular interest in the picture; The first is the symbolism used in the painting where the figure of Christ stands with his left foot on the grave edge, all the plants and trees in the background are alive and flourishing, while at the other side where Christ's foot is still in the grave, the fresco has a desolate, dead background. The other point of interest is that one of sleeping soldiers is a self-portrait of the artist.

Monterchi

Arezzo

For example, the nudes in "Death of Adam" are contrasted to the figures in "Solomon and Sheba", the bright daylight of "Victory of Constantine" with the gloom of "Dream of Constantine? (one of the first night scenes in Western art). In addition, each fresco is organized in two sections; a square paired with a longer rectangle, which he exploited to create a sense of rhythm.

Florence

Almost all of Piero's works are religious in nature, primarily altarpieces and church frescoes. An exception is his serene and noble double portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (1465). This famous work is to be found in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

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• Piero della Francesca