1.
Umbria
–
Umbria, is a region of historic and modern central Italy. It is the only Italian region having neither a coastline nor a border with other countries and it includes the Lake Trasimeno, Marmores Falls, and is crossed by the River Tiber. Umbria is known for its landscapes, traditions, history, culinary delights, artistic legacy, and influence on culture. Contained within Umbria is Cospaia, a republic created by accident that existed from 1440 to 1826 Umbria is bordered by Tuscany to the west, Marche to the east. It is the only Italian region having neither a coastline nor a border with other countries. The commune of Città di Castello has an exclave named Monte Ruperto within Marche. Umbria is crossed by two valleys, the Umbrian valley, stretching from Perugia to Spoleto, and the Tiber Valley, west of the first one, the Tiber River forms the approximate border with Lazio, although its source is just over the Tuscan border. The Tibers three principal tributaries flow southward through Umbria, the Chiascio basin is relatively uninhabited as far as Bastia Umbra. About 10 kilometres farther on, it joins the Tiber at Torgiano, the third river is the Nera, flowing into the Tiber further south, at Terni, its valley is called the Valnerina. The upper Nera cuts ravines in the mountains, the lower, in antiquity, the plain was covered by a pair of shallow, interlocking lakes, the Lacus Clitorius and the Lacus Umber. They were drained by the Romans over several hundred years, an earthquake in the 4th century and the political collapse of the Roman Empire resulted in the refilling of the basin. The eastern part of the region, being crossed by many faults, has often hit by earthquakes, the last ones have been that of 1997. In literature, Umbria is referred to as il cuore verde dItalia, the phrase is taken from a poem by Giosuè Carducci, the subject of which is the source of the Clitunno River in Umbria. The region is named for the Umbri people, an Italic people which was absorbed by the expansion of the Romans, the Umbris capital city was Gubbio, where today is housed the longest and most important document of any of the Osco-Umbrian group of languages, the Iguvine Tablets. In fact, they belonged to a family of neighbouring peoples with similar roots. Their language was Umbrian, one of the Italic languages, related to Latin, the Etruscans were the chief enemies of the Umbri. The Etruscan invasion went from the western seaboard towards the north and east, eventually driving the Umbrians towards the Apennine uplands, nevertheless, the Umbrian population does not seem to have been eradicated in the conquered districts. The border between Etruria and Umbria was the Tiber river, the ancient name of Todi, Tular, after the downfall of the Etruscans, Umbrians aided the Samnites in their struggle against Rome
2.
Italy
–
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
3.
Andrea del Verrocchio
–
Andrea del Verrocchio, born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de Cioni, was an Italian painter, sculptor, and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence. He became known by his nickname Verrocchio, from vero occhio, which in Italian means true eye, few paintings are attributed to him with certainty, but a number of important painters were trained at his workshop. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi and his greatest importance was as a sculptor and his last work, the Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is generally accepted as a masterpiece. Verrocchio was born in Florence in around 1435 and his father, Michele di Francesco Cioni, initially worked as a tile and brick maker, then later as a tax collector. Verrocchio never married, and had to provide support for some members of his family. He was at first apprenticed to a goldsmith and it has been suggested that he was later apprenticed to Donatello, but there is no evidence of this and John Pope-Hennessy considered that it is contradicted by the style of his early works. It has been suggested that he was trained as a painter under Fra Filippo Lippi, little is known about his life. His main works are dated in his last twenty years and his advancement owed much to the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici and his workshop was in Florence where he was a member of the Guild of St Luke. At the end of his life he opened a new workshop in Venice where he was working on the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni and he died in Venice in 1488. Despite the importance of Verrocchios workshop in the training of younger painters, very few paintings are universally recognised as his own work, a painting of the Madonna with seated child in tempera on panel is considered an early work of 1468-70. It is a work which has formerly been attributed to Pollaiuolo. Covi thinks that it was painted with assistance from Ghirlandaio. It is now in London at the National Gallery, the Baptism of Christ, now in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, was painted in 1474–75. In this work Verrocchio was assisted by Leonardo da Vinci, then a youth and a member of his workshop, who painted the angel on the left and the part of the background above. According to Vasari, Andrea resolved never to touch the brush again because Leonardo, his pupil, had far surpassed him, the Madonna enthroned with John the Baptist and St Donato is in the Pistoia Cathedral. It had been left unfinished and was completed by Lorenzo di Credi when Verrocchio was in Venice near the end of his life, around 1465 he is believed to have worked on the lavabo of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence. He therefore had the problem of placing two statues in a tabernacle originally intended for one, as Covi says, the problem was resolved in a most felicitous manner. The work was placed in position in 1483 and has been acclaimed since the day of its unveiling, in 1468 Verrocchio made a bronze candlestick, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, for the Signoria of Florence
4.
Painting
–
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
5.
Fresco
–
Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
6.
Raphael
–
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running a large workshop and, despite his death at 37. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings and he was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region and his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture, growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a humanistic education however, it is unclear how easily he read Latin. His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1,1494 by his father, Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master and he had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been a great help to his father. A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity and his fathers workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter, and Luca Signorelli, according to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice despite the tears of his mother. The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, an alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters, the Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a master, that is to say fully trained and his first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was named in the commission
7.
Bartolomeo Caporali
–
Bartolomeo Caporali was an Italian painter born and active in Perugia. He was the father of Giovanni Battista Caporali and was part of the Umbrian School of Painting and he painted a Madonna and Saints for the church of Santa Maria Maddalena at Castiglione del Lago. Annunciation, a triptych by Bonfigli, San Domenico Church, Perugia, virbin and Saints, Santa Maria Maddalena church, Castiglione del Lago. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical, york St. #4, Covent Garden, London, Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18,2007, George Bell and Sons
8.
Leonardo da Vinci
–
He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank, many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the Universal Genius or Renaissance Man, an individual of unquenchable curiosity and feverishly inventive imagination. Much of his working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded to him by Francis I of France, Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait, Leonardos drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have survived, Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated power, an adding machine. Some of his inventions, however, such as an automated bobbin winder. A number of Leonardos most practical inventions are nowadays displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, and hydrodynamics, today, Leonardo is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived. Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 at the hour of the night in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci. He was the son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense – da Vinci simply meaning of Vinci, his birth name was Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci, meaning Leonardo. The inclusion of the title ser indicated that Leonardos father was a gentleman, little is known about Leonardos early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother and his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera Amadori, who loved Leonardo but died young in 1465 without children. When Leonardo was sixteen, his father married again to twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini, pieros legitimate heirs were born from his third wife Margherita di Guglielmo and his fourth and final wife, Lucrezia Cortigiani. Leonardo received an education in Latin, geometry and mathematics. In later life, Leonardo recorded only two childhood incidents, one, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face
9.
Domenico Ghirlandaio
–
Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the third generation of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio. Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaios workshop, including the famous Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio was born Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. Tommaso had two children by his second wife, also named Antonia, whom he married in 1464. Domenicos half-sister Alessandra married the painter Bastiano Mainardi in 1494, both Ghirlandaios father and his uncle, Antonio, were setaiuolo a minuto. Giorgio Vasari reported that Domenico was at first apprenticed to his father, the nickname Il Ghirlandaio came to Domenico from his father, who was famed for creating the metallic garland-like headdresses worn by Florentine women. He was eventually apprenticed to Alesso Baldovinetti to study painting and mosaic, according to the art historian Günter Passavent, he was apprenticed in Florence to Andrea del Verrocchio. He maintained an association with other Florentine painters including Botticelli. Ghirlandaio excelled in the painting of frescos and it is for his fresco cycles that he is best known, an early commission came to him in the 1470s from the Commune of San Gimignano to decorate the Chapel of Santa Fina in the Collegiate Church of that city. The frescos, executed from 1477 to 1478, depict two miraculous events associated with the death of Saint Fina, in 1480, Ghirlandaio painted St. Jerome in His Study as a companion piece to Saint Augustine in His Study by Botticelli in the Church of Ognissanti, Florence. He also painted a life-sized Last Supper in its refectory, from 1481 to 1485, he was employed on frescoes at the Palazzo Vecchio, painting among other works an Apotheosis of St. Ghirlandaio painted the Vocation of the Apostles. He also painted the now lost Resurrection of Christ, the Crossing of the Red Sea has also been attributed to him, but is consistent with the style of Cosimo Roselli who was also part of the commission. Ghirlandaio is known to have created works in Rome, now lost. The first of these paintings contains portraits of Lorenzo de Medici, Sassetti and Lorenzos children with their tutor, the Resuscitation shows the painters own likeness. In 1483, there arrived in Florence a masterpiece of the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes, now known as the Portinari Altarpiece, it was an Adoration of the Shepherds, commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, an employee of the Medici Bank. The painting was in oil paint, not the tempera employed in Florence, the aspect of the painting that had a profound effect on Ghirlandaio was the naturalism with which the shepherds were depicted. Ghirlandaio painted the altarpiece of the Sassetti chapel, an Adoration of the Shepherds and it is in this painting that he particularly shows his indebtedness to the Portinari Altarpiece. The shepherds, among whom is a portrait of the artist himself, are portrayed with a realism that was an advance in Florentine painting at that time, the altarpiece is still in position in Santa Trinita, surrounded by the frescos of which it was the centrepiece
10.
Lorenzo di Credi
–
Lorenzo di Credi was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. He first influenced Leonardo da Vinci and then was influenced by him. Born in Florence, he started to work in Andrea del Verrocchios workshop, after the death of his master, he inherited the direction of the workshop. Amongst his other works are an Annunciation in the Uffizi, a Madonna with Child in the Galleria Sabauda of Turin. Of a later period are a Madonna and Saints and an Adoration of the Child in the Uffizi, in Fiesole, he remade parts of Fra Angelicos panels on the altars of the church of San Domenico. Lorenzos mature works are influenced by Fra Bartolomeo, Perugino and the young Raphael, caterina Sforza was the Lady of Forlì and Imola in Romagna, later prisoner of Cesare Borgia. The portrait, known also as La dama dei gelsomini, is now in the Pinacoteca of Forlì, hobbes, James R. Picture collectors manual, Dictionary of Painters. T. & W. Boone,29 Bond Street, London, Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, which contains material on Lorenzo di Credi
11.
Filippino Lippi
–
Filippino Lippi was an Italian painter working during the High Renaissance in Florence, Italy. Born Filippo Lippi in Prato, Tuscany, the son of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti. They moved to Spoleto, where Filippino served as workshop adjuvant in the construction of the Cathedral there, when his father died in 1469, he completed the frescos with Storie della Vergine in the cathedral. Filippino Lippi completed his apprenticeship in the workshop of Botticelli, who had been a pupil of Filippinos father, in 1472, Botticelli also took him as his companion in the Compagnia di San Luca. His first works greatly resemble those of Botticellis, but with less sensitivity and subtlety, the very first ones were initially attributed to an anonymous Amico di Sandro. Eventually Lippis style evolved into a personal and effective one in the years 1480-1485. Together with Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Botticelli, Lippi worked on the decoration of Lorenzo de Medicis villa at Spedaletto. On December 31,1482 he was commissioned to work on a wall of Sala dellUdienza of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, a work never begun. Soon after, probably in 1483-84, he was called to complete Masaccios decoration of Brancacci Chapel in the church of the Carmine, the work on the Sala degli Otto di Pratica, in the Palazzo Vecchio, started on February 20,1486. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery, in the same years Piero di Francesco del Pugliese asked him to paint the altarpiece with the Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard, now in the Badia Fiorentina, Florence. This is Lippis most popular picture, a composition of unreal items, with its very particular elongated figures, backed by a scenario of rocks. The work is dated to 1480–86, eventually he worked for Tanai de Nerli in Florences Santo Spirito church. On April 21,1487, Filippo Strozzi asked him to decorate the chapel in Santa Maria Novella with the Stories of St. John Evangelist. He worked on this piece intermittently, only completing it in 1503, the windows with musical themes, also designed by Filippino, were completed between June and July 1503. Filippino showed his characters in a landscape which recreated the ancient world in its finest details and he created in this way an animated, mysterious, fantastic but also disquieting style, showing the unreality of something as a nightmare. In this way, Filippino portrayed ruthless executioners deformed by grim faces, in the scene with St. Philip expelling a monster from the temple, the statue of the pagan god is a living figure which seems to dare the Christian saint. In 1488, Lippi moved to Rome, where Lorenzo de Medici had advised Cardinal Oliviero Carafa to entrust him the decoration of the chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. These frescoes show a new kind of inspiration, quite different from the earlier works, Lippi finished the cycle by 1493
12.
Piero della Francesca
–
Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its humanism, its use of geometric forms. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. He was most probably apprenticed to the local painter Antonio di Giovanni dAnghiari, because in documents about payments it is noted that he was working with Antonio in 1432 and May 1438. Besides, he took notice of the work of some of the Sienese artists active in San Sepolcro during his youth. In 1439 Piero received, together with Domenico Veneziano, payments for his work on frescoes for the church of SantEgidio in Florence, in Florence he must have met leading masters like Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello and Brunelleschi. The classicism of Masaccios frescoes and his figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were for him an important source of inspiration. Dating of Pieros undocumented work is difficult because his style does not seem to have developed over the years, in 1442 he was listed as eligible for the City Council of San Sepolcro. Three years later, he received the commission for the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, in 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of SantAndrea of Ferrara, also lost. His influence was strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura. Two years later he was in Rimini, working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, in this sojourn he executed in 1451 the famous fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, as well as Sigismondos portrait. Thereafter Piero was active in Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna, in 1454 he signed a contract for the Polyptych of Saint Augustine in the church of SantAgostino in Sansepolcro. The central panel of this polyptic is lost and the four panels of the wings, a few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome, here he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, for frescoes in Vatican Palace which have also been destroyed, the Baptism of Christ, in The National Gallery in London, was executed around 1460 for the high altar of the church of the Priory of S. Other notable works of Piero della Francescas maturity are the frescoes of the Resurrection of Christ in Sansepolcro, in 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456, the cycle of frescoes, depicting the Legend of the True Cross, is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found
.jpg)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
Media related to Pietro Perugino at Wikimedia Commons
