Tim Marlow TV - Renaissance Revolution TV - Marcus du Sautoy TV - The National Gallery online -
Piero Della Francesca has been seen as one of the mystery men of Western art. A painter of enigmatic images rendered with mathematical precision and monumental vision. But which are often strange and illusive, haunting even. He was overlooked for centuries. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e15: Piero Della Francesca, Sky Arts 2003
Piero seems to have ended a career with a picture for himself ... Piero died in 1492. ibid.
The space that Piero Della Francesca creates in his Baptism of Christ ... Piero was the pioneer whose ideas made possible the art of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Renaissance Revolution: Piero Della Francesca
The problem of perspective is how to represent the three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional canvas. To get a sense of depth, a sense of a third dimension, Piero used mathematics. Marcus du Sautoy, The Story of Maths III: The Frontiers of Space, BBC 2008
Piero Della Francesca is one of the most admired 15th-century Italian painters. The cool colour palette and geometrical compositions contribute to the refined and meditative nature of his works.
Piero was born in Borgo Sansepolcro, in Tuscany. He worked in various central Italian towns, but retained links with Sansepolcro, visible in the background of the Baptism of Christ. The distinctive rolling hills are depicted in a number of his works, such as The Nativity. We know nothing of Piero’s training, and the chronology of his works is hard to establish as many are lost. By 1439 he was working in Florence with Domenico Vaneziano, whose treatment of space, like that of Uccello, must have influenced him.
Piero was also a mathematical theorist. This interest is reflected in the clearly defined volume of the figures and accurate perspective in his works. It is balanced by a naturalism which derived from Netherlandish art. His patrons were among the most powerful men in Italy: the Duke of Urbino, Sigismund Malatesta in Rimini, and Pope Nicholas V in Rome. According to tradition, Piero-taught Signorelli Vasari says he became blind in old age. He was buried in Sansepolcro. The National Gallery online biography