Piero della Francesca and the Invention of the Artist

Description

As one of the most innovative and enlightened painters of the early Italian Renaissance, Piero della Francesca knew how to capture the moment. He brought space, luminosity and unparalleled subtlety to painting, during an era that was aware it was forging epochal change. Piero invented the role of the modern artist by becoming a traveller, a courtier, a geometrician, a patron and much else, and his pursuits were taken up by countless authors and artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Giorgio Vasari. In this nuanced account of his life and art, Machtelt Bruggen Israels reconstructs how Piero came of age. Successfully demystifying the persistent notion of Piero's art as enigmatic, she reveals the simple and stunning intentions behind his work. 'Captures the essential clarity, truthfulness, and modernity of Piero della Francesca's art...as magisterial as its subject in achieving a new and compelling perspective on his life and work.' - Patricia Rubin, Professor Emerita of Fine Arts, New York University

Machtelt Bruggen Israels is Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art at the University of Amsterdam and Visiting Professor at the University of Florence. Her publications include Sassetta: The Borgo Sansepolcro Altarpiece (2009) and The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti (2015).

"Israels's book captures the essential clarity, truthfulness, and modernity of Piero della Francesca's art in prose that skillfully evokes his technical mastery and subtle artistry. Piero's career is followed chronologically and contextually and staged in terms of the roles he adopted and performed--pupil and master, citizen and courtier, devotee and scientist among them. Close looking and careful description reveal the intellectual rigor and expressive force of his paintings. The book is as magisterial as its subject in achieving a new and compelling perspective on his life and work."--Patricia Rubin, New York University "Israels's text plunges the reader back into the fifteenth century so that Piero della Francesca's art can be seen through his eyes and those of his contemporaries."--Carl Brandon Strehlke, Philadelphia Museum of Art