The Cambridge Companion to Piero della Francesca

A great master of the early Renaissance, Piero della Francesca created paintings for ecclesiastics, confraternities, and illustrious nobles throughout the Italian peninsula. Since the early twentieth century, the rational space, abstract designs, lucid illumination and naturalistic details of his pictures have attracted a wide audience. Piero’s treatises on mathematics and perspective also fascinate scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This Companion brings together new essays that offer a synthesis and overview of Piero’s life and accomplishments as a painter and theoretician. They explore a variety of themes associated with the artist’s career, including the historical and religious circumstances surrounding Piero’s altarpieces and frescoes; the politics underlying his portraits; the significance of clothing in his paintings; the influence of his theories on perspective and mathematics; and the artist’s enduring fascination for modern painters and writers.

• Interdisciplinary approach • Important new archival information and interpretations of the art • Up-to-date bibliography

1. The Misericordia Polyptych: reflections on spiritual and visual culture in Sansepolcro Diane Cole Ahl; 2. The spiritual world of Piero’s art Timothy Verdon; 3. Piero’s Legend of the True Cross and the friars of San Francesco Jeryldene M. Wood; 4. Piero’s meditation on the Nativity Marilyn Aronberg Lavin; 5. ‘Troppo belli e troppo eccellenti’: observations on dress in the work of Piero della Francesca Jane Bridgeman; 6. Piero della Francesca’s ruler portraits Joanna Woods-Marsden; 7. The Renaissance prospettiva: perspectives of the ideal city Philip Jacks; 8. Piero’s treatises: the mathematics of form Margaret Daly Davis; 9. Piero della Francesca’s mathematics J. V. Field; 10. Piero’s parnassus of modern painters and poets Anne B. Barriault.

‘Jeryldene Wood, offers a balanced overview of Piero and a strong essay setting the Arezzo frescos in their local Franciscan context … many of this volume‘s sixty-two pages of notes reflect literature that has appeared since the 1992 ‘Piero year‘, and these references also stand as invaluable companions.‘ Burlington Magazine