Concrete ideal: Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca(1412-1492), Italian painter, is usually thought as ideal painter, and platonic painter, more mathematical painter than real painter, but I think that he was also concrete and he showed some relevant reference for realism or terrain behavior, certainly human reality. The angels on left side of Baptism of Christ(fig.1), are certainly a human and platonic representation, we can understand it by gaze of angel to us and his hand on shoulder of other angel, we certainly are involved by that gaze, and it is more human and psychological, certainly Piero della Francesca didn’t know never psychological dynamics, but certainly he has knew the will of human gender to involve to the painting. On same painting is other reference, man is undressing to right side on background(Fig.2), he is a touch of human gender during divine event; that is human dynamic that we do every day, then Piero has seen somebody during his undressing and he has showed this figure. The third painting of Piero is like others, perfect meeting of ideal and terrain reality; the Resurrection of Christ(Fig.3) has some expedient very human and he meets some human nature, as the militaries sleeping(Fig.4), the anatomy is very marked, and it shows the concrete analysis of human gender that collides to divine nature of Christ(Fig.3). Piero has suggested also a posture of figure to Federico Barocci(1535-1612), he born to Urbino, Italian city, distant far from Borgo San Sepolcro, where born Piero, 43 miles, and it not was very long distant, we must consider that we are thinking about 16^th century, anyway that figure is below Crucifixion(Figs.5-6) on polyptych of Misericordia, and I think that Barocci has seen certainly this figure or he has remembered this figure to a Saint Francis(Fig.7) to Vision of Saint Francis(Fig.8), then Piero is platonic painter and very terrain and he has used these two natures to his painting. But Piero has influenced also some painter his contemporary as Desiderio da Subiaco(Fig.12), in fact the physiognomy of figures of this painter are very next, so that to typology(Figs.4, 9, 10), eyebrows very marketed, labial curve likewise marketed and beard treated for single lines as Saint Jerome(Fig.11); Desiderio da Subiaco could seen Piero and his frescos in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, in ex chapel of Saint Michael, now very fragmentary.

Alessandro Lusana   

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