Piero della Francesca. The seduction of perspective
Civic Museum of Sansepolcro
Sansepolcro (Ar) - Until 6 January 2019

Refined and innovative painter, master of abacus, Euclidean surveyor, Archimedes scholar, Piero della Francesca is considered one of the most emblematic artists of the Italian Renaissance. Concurrently with the presentation of the restoration of his fresco Resurrezione di Cristo at the Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, an exhibition path has just been inaugurated that allows us to deepen the immense scientific culture of the artist.

The exhibition project, developed around De prospectiva pingendi (the first illustrated treatise on perspective) makes us understand how humanist painting finds its most natural basis in science. In fact, it is a collection of reproductions of drawings, perspective models, scientific instruments, videos and mathematical research that the artist himself has applied to his painting. Studies, calculations and projects left behind by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer, until the mid-sixteenth century.

After numerous vicissitudes that saw him wandering from 1610 between Italy and France to then finally arrive at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan where today it is preserved, after four years of careful and intense work the restoration of the preparatory Carton of the School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio has come to an end. An immense, magical, revealed composition that takes your breath away. Although the work is known as the School of Athens, the correct title is The Philosophy is has great artistic and historical value.
"The preparatory carton for the Athens school is unique in the history of art. Not only is it the only Renaissance preparatory cartoon of this size, almost complete until nowadays, but it represents the culmination of the ideational process of Raphael (Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520) for one of the works symbol of the Italian Renaissance: the fresco of School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican commissioned to the artist by Pope Julius II ”, declares Maurizio Michelozzi in a note, who directed and coordinated the restoration on a design by Stefano Boeri Architetti.