Sunday 29 March 2009

Arezzo and "our" Piero della Francesca

The meeting of Salomon and the Queen of Sheba.


Our itinerary led through the province of Arezzo in discovery of the works of Piero della Francesca, one of the greatest Italian Renaissance painters of the XVth century.
In Arezzo we rushed up to
Basilica of San Francesco - Romanesque style church in the center of the old city. In the Bacci di Lorenzo chapel we found what we were so much looking for: Legend of the True Cross series of Piero della Francesca frescoes. It is a collection of 1o big masterpieces made between 1452 and 1466. The most impressive are The adoration of the wood and The Battle of Constantine and Maxentius.

The landscapes resemble the rocky mountains between the Arezzo and Sansepolcro, birthplace of Piero. When you look at the painting what you feel is an aura of serenity and dignity.
The structure of the paintings is clear and well organized. Perfectly used chromatic palette and chiaroscuro transform the paintings into the fantastic 3-dimensional images.

Constantine Dream fresco is one of the first night chiaroscuro paintings of the Renaissance era.

Piero was an artist and a mathematician. The perspectives on the frescoes are geometrically ideal. His treatise "De prospectiva pingendi" ( "On painting perspective" ) was the first ever writen tutorial how to paint a perspective.



Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo and a fragment of The meeting of Salomon and the Queen of Sheba.


Camera: NIKON D80. ISO 100/2600. Neat Image post-processing.

Maciek. 26.04.2009