THE GENIUS OF PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA

Long neglected, Piero della Francesca is now regarded as one of the greatest Renaissance painters and his name is closely allied to the Renaissance court at Urbino.
He was born some time between 1410 - 1420 in Sansepolcro, just over the border in Tuscany. His earliest known painting is the Madonna della Misericordia in his native town but like many of his works it took years to complete - it was commissioned in 1445 for delivery within three years but was finally paid for some 17 years later.
A master of the impersonal, his mathematical clarity and absence of sentimentality produced images whose spiritual depth still confounds us. Always seeking to redraw the boundaries of art, he was also a great theorist and wrote two of the most important treatises of his time on prospective.
The last record we have of him painting was in 1478 but he live until 1492 - tragically, blindness seems to have blighted his last years. Two of his finest works can be see in Urbino - the Flagellation of Christ and the Madonna di Senigallia.