The Wall Street Journal-20080202-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Leisure - Arts -- Masterpiece- Piero- in Perfect Proportion- His -Virgin and Child- Balances Art- Science and History
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Leisure & Arts -- Masterpiece: Piero, in Perfect Proportion; His 'Virgin and Child' Balances Art, Science and History
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Milan, Italy -- Some viewers prefer pictures with Sturm-und-Drang. Others like luxe et calme. For the latter group, no painter looms larger than the Umbrian Piero della Francesca (1415/1420-1492), master of perspective and geometry, and creator of otherworldly perfection that raises human beings to the level of divinities. Although you can find a few examples of his work in the U.S. (notably at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.), nothing matches a trip to Italy to understand his glories. Forget the falling dollar. Think instead of lifting your spirits.
If I had to choose a single work by Piero, other than his frescoes inside the church of San Francesco in Arezzo depicting the history of the True Cross, I'd take, hands down, the "Virgin and Child With Saints, Angels and Federigo da Montefeltro" -- to give it its full title -- an enormous altarpiece from 1472-74 at Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera.
Piero knew Euclidian geometry and the more recent application of mathematical principles to art by his slightly older contemporary Leon Battista Alberti. He wrote three books on the subject. More important, he meticulously applied the science of perspective in his paintings, with regard to human figures as well as to their architectural settings. By 1472 he had perfected his art. Piero received the commission for the altarpiece from the Duke of Montefeltro, probably for the church of the Osservanti di San Donato in Urbino. After Federigo's death in 1482, the picture was transferred to the Church of San Bernardino (who is one of the saints surrounding the Virgin). It came -- courtesy of Napoleon -- to the Brera in 1811, six years after the museum opened to the public.
Located in a fashionable Milanese district, the Brera is somewhat down-at-heels. The paintings, in an orderly sequence on the second floor, overlook the courtyard. Their quality is overwhelming, but neither the number nor the arrangement will clobber or fatigue you. One fall day, there were a couple of British groups wandering through with guides, and some random tourists. The halls were quiet. When I got to the room with Piero, I was entirely alone. No one interrupted my line of vision; no one was screaming or listening to an Acoustiguide. The helpful, knowledgeable attendant allowed me to take one of the armchairs from a side wall and position it directly in front of the guardrail that cordoned off the picture, 8 feet wide by 11 feet tall. I sat communing with Piero and my thoughts.
The picture is a version of what art historians call the "sacra conversazione," but no one is schmoozing. Thirteen people occupy the space, in almost perfect harmony. A rigorous perspective, a spatial coherence -- everything Piero famously wrote about and worked for -- maintain a virtually mathematical purity. At the center of the picture is the Virgin, sitting not on a throne but on a military bench (a reference to the patron-duke), with her hands pressed to her chest. Above her, a mysterious ostrich egg hangs down from the shell-like vault of the apse, in the way the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovers above Christ in pictures of the Baptism or above Mary in pictures of the Annunciation.
What does it mean? Some say Mary's own Immaculate Conception; others, the motif of birth itself. At its most abstract it becomes an image of geometric wholeness, a pure shape repeated below in the heads of the Virgin and the four beautiful epicene angels on either side of her.
Some people say the ostrich egg stands for Battista, the recently dead duchess of Montefeltro, the wife of the donor, and a member of Milan's Sforza family. Her Christian name honors John the Baptist, the figure on the far left, who is pointing down to the space where the duchess, were she still alive, would be kneeling across from her husband, in perfect balance.
Piero has, in other words, created a work that, when we first look at it, impresses in part by virtue of its one human asymmetry. When we know the truth, we can fill in what, or rather who, is missing. She is not there, and she is.
In the same way, Christ is lying across his mother's lap in a somewhat awkward position, looking as though he might fall down. His balance is nothing short of miraculous, especially since his mother has raised her hands in prayer, rather than use them to support him. We sense, however, another spectral presence, this time something in the future: The posture is that of the Pieta. Christ's birth foreshadows his death. Even the coral necklace he wears -- in its cross-like shape and blood-red beads -- predicts the crucifixion.
Piero joins secular history, Christian iconography, abstract geometry and painterly expertise in perfect proportions. The four angels have abstracted, unemotional faces. The six saints (and Federigo and Christ) have more rounded, human ones. The 11 central figures -- 10 standing around the seated Virgin -- are matched by 11 vertical marble panels behind them in the little chapel. The picture's vanishing point, dead center, is the perfect oval of the Madonna's head. Piero infused his work with a wonderful symmetry of 2:3 in, for example, the relation of the picture's width to its height. The ratio is echoed by that of the diameter of the circle in the upper architectural vault to that of the circle inscribed in the picture's lower part. Every element contributes to harmony.
At the same time, the painter has not neglected realistic elements. Federigo always appeared in profile, facing left, because he had lost his right eye in battle. The light in the picture comes from above and to the left, so the right side is more luminous, the left one darker and more shadowy. (The picture has suffered some fading, even though it underwent cleaning and conservation 12 years ago.) Piero has combined older and newer styles. Dutch realism, which had migrated south to Urbino in the 1470s, makes an appearance in a stylized carpet and in the Duke's armor. Federigo's hand -- somewhat more thickly and luminously done -- was probably painted by Piero's Spanish assistant Pedro Berruguete, who didn't forget rings for the fingers.
But the angels -- their hair, their jewels, their clothing -- are purely Florentine in appearance. It's as though Piero has tried to suggest two registers, one for the worldliness of his patron, and the other for the heavenliness of the angels. His picture synthesizes practical stylistic matters (it also combines oil and tempera) as well as religious and geometric ones.
The Brera altarpiece was for many years considered Piero's last work. Recently, scholars have decided that this honor goes to the 1475 "Nativity," much abraded and perhaps unfinished, in London's National Gallery. But Milan's much larger and thoroughly composed "Virgin and Child" is an unqualified masterpiece, the distillation of years of study, work, and both theoretical and practical researches. It's Piero's real final statement, a climax. After this, in the last two decades of his life, he began to go blind. When he died, on Oct. 12, 1492, a fellow Italian was making a discovery of a different sort well west of Italy. Piero had made his major discovery years before.
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Mr. Spiegelman writes about the arts for the Journal.
