On the trail of Piero

Piero della Francesca is today acknowledged as one of the foundational artists of the Renaissance. Aldous Huxley thought his ‘Resurrection’ ‘the best painting in the world’. His compositions marry art and science with cool precision and a sophisticated grasp of perspective — he was, after all, a mathematician. But he was only rediscovered in the mid-19th century after centuries of relative obscurity. Following his death in 1492, his artistic achievements faded in the memory and he became known chiefly as a geometer (his numerous writings include an innovative treatise on solid geometry and perspective).

This is not wholly surprising. Many of the most impressive paintings in Piero’s oeuvre are not to be found conveniently in major museum collections (though the National Gallery does own three panel paintings, including a damaged, and possibly unfinished, Nativity — Piero was a notoriously slow painter who very rarely adhered to commission deadlines). Rather they are found exactly where they were painted, in the provincial churches and palaces they were commissioned for. To see them one must embark on the ‘Piero trail’, which takes in the artist’s birthplace of Sansepolcro — where you’ll find Huxley’s favourite — as well as Arezzo, Rimini, Monterchi and Urbino. When Huxley wrote his panegyric to ‘The Resurrection’ in 1925, these regions were still quite difficult to get to. Very few art connoisseurs would have seen the images, even in reproduction.

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Piero tourism has caught up somewhat. Today, you can access a new app for the trail, which enables you to locate the exact topographical spots believed — though not without contention — to have inspired the panoramas in some of Piero’s paintings. Observation points, known as Piero’s Balconies, high up on the rugged hillsides between Sansepolcro, Rimini and Urbino, have been meticulously mapped out by academic researchers Rosetta Borchia and Olivia Nesci.