Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a record of the artist's life and works. Piero della Francesca is probably the most popular painter of the Quattroncento. The mathematical perfection of his forms and his superb sense of interval give a timeless air of serenity to his work, enhanced by pale and soft colours - the famous diptych of his patrons the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, with its extraordinary landscape extending so far that its boundaries are lost in the distance, is one the best examples.;Born in the small Tuscan town of Borgo san Sepulcro, he worked first in Florence in 1439 with Domenico Veneziano painting frescoes in the church of Sant' Egidio, and by 1442 was back in Borgo to paint the commissioned polyptych of the "Madonna della Misericordia" (not completed until 1462). In 1452 he began the work on which his fame chiefly rests; the fresco cycle, in the choir of St Francesco at Arezzo, depicting the story of the True Cross. The frescoes were almost unknown for centuries and suffered neglect, but fortunately were not repainted and therefore provide an example of Piero's mature style. His last two pictures are the "Madonna with the Duke of Urbino" (c 1472/75), known as the "Brera Madonna" (in Milan) and the unfinished "Nativity" (National Gallery, London). He stopped painting in the 1470s.
