Last years of Piero della Francesca

The last two decades of Piero’s life were spent in Sansepolcro, where paintings, now lost, were commissioned by local churches in 1474 and 1478. In 1480 Piero became prior of the Confraternita di San Bartolomeo. Among the few extant paintings from this period are the harmonious Nativity, the Madonna from the church at Sta. Maria delle Grazie near Senigallia, and an awkwardly constructed altarpiece in Perugia, Madonna with Child and Saints. The Annunciation from that altarpiece, however, indicates that Piero’s interest in perspectival problems remained keen.

In his old age Piero seems to have abandoned painting in favour of more abstruse pursuits. Between 1474 and 1482 he wrote a treatise on painting, De prospectiva pingendi (“On Perspective in Painting”), dedicated to his patron, the Duke of Urbino. In its range of topics and method of organization, the book follows Alberti and the ancient Greek geometer Euclid. The principal manuscript, in Parma (Biblioteca Palatina), was handwritten by the artist himself and illuminated by him with diagrams on geometric, proportional, and perspectival problems. A second treatise, the De quinque corporibus regularibus (“On the Five Regular Bodies”), written and illustrated some time after 1482, follows Plato and Pythagoras in dealing with the notion of perfect proportions. Del abaco (“On the Abacus”) is a pamphlet on applied mathematics.

Piero’s fascination with geometry and mathematics is a corollary of his own art; his manner of theoretical expression owes much to his mentor Alberti and is analogous to that of his younger contemporary Leonardo da Vinci; the rigour and logic of the arguments, however, are unique to Piero.

A reliable 16th-century tradition claimed that Piero was blind in his last years. If true, this must have occurred after 1490 because several autographs from that year survive. Moreover, his will of 1486 refers to the painter as aged but sound of mind and body.

Piero did not establish a lasting tradition in central Italy. Luca Signorelli and Perugino, who are presumed to be his most important pupils, followed the examples of other masters. Although Piero’s reticent art had little influence on the experiments of his great Florentine contemporaries, he enjoyed great fame for his scientific contributions. In 1497 he was described as “the monarch of our times of painting and architecture,” and the biographer Giorgio Vasari gave him high praise two generations later. In the 20th century, Piero’s career has been reconstructed and his position reevaluated, giving proper credit to both the science and the poetry of his art.