Piero della Francesca: indagine su un mito (Piero della Francesca: Exploring a Legend) opens 13 February at Musei San Domenico in Forlì. It runs through 26 June 2016.
This exhibition explores the artist known as “the king of painting” in his own day, only to be forgotten and then rediscovered by early modernists. Works by Piero will be shown alongside those by artists like Domenico Veneziano, Fra Angelico, Paolo Uccello, and Andrea del Castagno, at work in Florence at mid-century where Piero began his career. Influences from elsewhere in Italy, as well as those inspired by Piero, are represented through works by Marco Zoppo, Francesco del Cossa, Cristoforo da Lendinara, Bartolomeo Bonascia, Giovanni Angelo d’Antonio da Camerino, Nicola di Maestro Antonio, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Luca Signorelli, Melozzo da Forlì, and Antoniazzo Romano, Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina.
Works by 20th century artists exemplify the modern birth of the Piero legend. Indeed, the 1900s were the “century of Piero” in a number of ways: for the ever-increasing study of his oeuvre and its place in the history of Renaissance art as well as the many modern painters who appreciated his abstract rigor, geometric approach, and rarefied, distant, even disquieting style as exemplified by Guidi, Carrà, Donghi, Chirico, Casorati, Morandi, Funi, Campigli, Ferrazzi, Sironi and others.
Piero della Francesca, Madonna della Misericordia, 1445-1462, oil on panel. Museo Civico, Sansepolcro
Felice Casorati, Silvana Cenni, 1922, tempera on canvas. Private collection
Massimo Campigli, Le cucitrici, 1925, oil on canvas. Hermitage, Saint Petersburg
Giovanni Bellini, Compianto, 1473-76, oil on panel. Musei Vaticani, Città del Vaticano
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta con oggetti in viola, 1937, oil on canvas. Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Firenze
Piero della Francesca, San Girolamo e un devoto, ca. 1440-50, tempera and resin on panel. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venezia
Pio Semeghini, Omaggio a Piero (dalla Madonna di Senigallia), 1920, oil, pastel, and pencil on panel. Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Verona
Pino Casarini, La disfida di Barletta, ca. 1939, mixed media on canvas. Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Verona
Fra Angelico, Preghiera nell’orto / Natività, panel. Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì
Posted by Anne Leader