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Book Review: Piero Della Francesca. a Mathematician's Art, Volume 54

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Book Review: Piero Della Francesca. a Mathematician's Art, Volume 54 Book Review Piero della Francesca. A Mathematician’s Art Reviewed by Michele Emmer earlierin La Voce (1916)? And could Piero della Francesca. A Mathematician’s Art Roberto Longhi [14] have discerned J. V. Field the “problem” of Piero without his Yale University Press, 2005 curiosity about the avant-garde (I 256 pages, US$55 am thinking of his great text on ISBN 0-300-10342-5 Boccioni’s sculptures and on Sev- erini’s pailettes)? And could the PierodellaFrancesca(c.1420–1492)wasthepainter academic historians have ever felt who “set forth the mathematical principles of per- it legitimate to re-engage the 15th spective in fairly complete form...Piero was the century (the pre-Raphaelists, as painter-mathematician and the scientific artist par they were called at the time) with- excellence, and his contemporaries so regarded out the ongoing debate fostered him. He was also the best geometer of his time.” by the painters’ discoveries and So writes Morris Kline in his monumental work the contributions of the letterati Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern (Bontempelli, for example)? The Times [11]. Clearly, the title of J. V. Field’s book, reason is that these artists of ours Piero della Francesca. A Mathematician’s Art, is were clearly neither nostalgic nor amply justified. interested by antiquity: simply, antiquity did not exist and they The Rediscovery of Piero della Francesca were perhaps constructing it them- Giotto and Paolo Uccello, Signorelli selves, searching the territory of and Piero della Francesca practical- a new and unpredictable avant- ly did not exist in the first decade garde. De Chirico did not look for of this century. They returned to museographic painting: he himself public attention due to the criti- underlined its value for individuals cal taste characteristic of Italian in the 1920s. No one would have research, diametrically opposed been interested in Luca Pacioli, had to solid German philology. Would it not been for the research of an- Lionello Venturi’s book (1926) [18] other pentito futurist painter, Gino have come to life if the ex-futurist Severini. All in all, Art History itself Carlo Carrá had not written of would have been different without Giotto and Paolo Uccello ten years the contribution of these painters and technicians of image. Michele Emmer is professor in the Dipartimento di Matem- So wrote Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco in the cat- atica, “Castelnuovo”, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, alogue of the exhibition Piero della Francesca e Italy. His email address is [email protected]. il Novecento (Piero della Francesca and the 20th 372 Notices of the AMS Volume 54, Number 3 Century) [4]. The 500th anniversary of the artist’s long been one of my favorite masters. I have also death (1991–92) was the occasion of several im- been so lucky as to own a house in Senigallia, in the portant conferences and exhibitions. Four volumes Marche region in the center of Italy, a few hundred worth mentioning were published: Piero and the meters away from the church where Piero’s famous 20th Century, the catalogue of the 1991 exhibition Madonna di Senigallia was housed until the begin- in San Sepolcro (Piero’s birthplace) [12]; Piero and ning of the Second World War, when it was moved Urbino, Piero and the Renaissance Courts, the to the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. It has never been catalogue of the 1992 Urbino exhibition [3]; Milton returned. But Urbino is quite close to Senigallia, and Glaser’s catalogue Piero della Francesca, for the there, in addition to the Madonna, one can see The exhibition held at Arezzo in 1991 [16]; and final- Flagellation of Christ. I have therefore seen these ly Through Piero’s Eyes: Clothing and Jewelry in works by Piero dozens and dozens of times. In my Piero della Francesca’s Works[1].Theseconstituted own work, I have cited Longhi on severaloccasions. an important celebration of a great Italian Renais- As Dell’Arco says, that is where, for the most part, sance artist who influenced twentieth-century art, everything started. as witnessed by De Chirico’s metaphysical period Longhi was born in 1890. In 1911 he graduated (1910–20), with his Ferrara and Modena cathedrals, from the University of Turin with a thesis on Car- histrains,thoseemptypiazzasthatconveyamyste- avaggio. His interest was not only in ancient art but rious and perturbing motionlessness, an enigmatic also in the avant-garde, specifically futurism and stillness. Giorgio Morandi and so many others are Boccioni in particular. In 1914 he published a long also clear examples. articleon“PierodeiFranceschi[i.e.,dellaFrancesca] Dell’Arco added, in his chapter entitled “Styles and the Development of Venetian Painting” in the of the return to order: perspective and space, light, journal2 published by Adolfo Venturi, who had geometry”: been his professor in Scuola di perfezionamento Right after the [First World] war, (school for advanced studies). In 1927 he revised researchresumes in exactly the op- and republished this article in the journal Valori posite way from the past. Painting Plastici under the title “Piero della Francesca” [14]. returns to being precise, mentality Longhi proposed a look with fresh eyes at the ex- to being ancient, structures med- periments in painting carried out by part of the itated and color orderly. Giotto artistic culture of Tuscany at the beginning of the and Paolo Uccello were evoked by fifteenth century, “when some artists, too much a master of futurism, Carlo Carrá. in love with space to come back to a superficial Frescoes became the subject of spazialitá (sense of space), too much in love with meditation, cassoni and predelle color to rely on a chiaroscuro intended to create an were reread, and Carrá and De illusion of space, understood that there was only Chirico point a clear finger to Mi- one way to express in a picture shape and color at lano’s neoclassicism, Mastrini to the same time: perspective.” Longhi also wrote: “By Etruria (ancient Tuscany) and Oppi constructing, throughaneffortatsynthesis, shapes to Giovanni Bellini. All of these are according to their countable and measurable sur- clear sources. The most secret, al- faces, [perspective] succeeded in presenting them beit the most fertile, will continue all asa projection upon a plane, readyto be clothed to be the meditation on Piero della in calm, broad areas of color” [14, p. 11]. Giaco- Francesca, the name which Roberto mo Agosti added, in his essay3 “From Piero dei Longhi brought to the fore starting Franceschi to Piero della Francesca”: “This inter- in 1914.1 Many artists welcomed pretation of perspective as the art of synthesizing Longhi’s book on Piero with memo- ‘shape and color at the same time’ allowed him rable texts. In fact, when the topics (Longhi)tobeginbyidentifyinginPaoloUccelloand of proportion, number, color-light, perspective, regular bodies are re- Domenico Veneziano the Florentine models closest ferred to, Piero della Francesca is to Piero della Francesca; and this interpretation always implicit. [4] brought him to recognize the most evident man- ifestations of the visual influence of Piero in the I was very happy to have received J. V. Field’s worksofAntonellodaMessina,‘Themost disperato book on Piero della Francesca for review, because prospettico (enthusiastic expert in perspective) of I too have been influenced by reading Longhi’s the human figure’ and those of Giovanni Bellini, essays, by de Chirico’s metaphysical works, and by the paintings of Morandi and Carrá. Piero has 2L’Arte; see footnote 1. 3 1R. Longhi, Piero dei Franceschi e lo sviluppo della pittura G. Agosti, Da Piero dei Franceschi a Piero della Francesca veneziana, L’Arte, XVII (1914), pp. 198–221 and 241–256. (qualche avvertenza per la lettura di due saggi longhiani), Reprinted in [14]. in [12], p. 199. March 2007 Notices of the AMS 373 ‘who, without rejecting the problem of form, con- the purpose of exposing their alleged underlying siders it as taking to higher levels the problem of geometrical structure.” More frequently than not, color.”’ Longhi wrote: “Here is what constitutes the these geometric constructions are carried out us- unity-distinction of Antonello and Giovanni: their ing reproductions that are evidently quite different synthesis a priori is Piero” [14, p. 39]. And regard- from the original, at least in size. Field comments, ing The Flagellation, he added “the perfect union and one cannot disagree, that “trying to find per- between architecture and painting that emerges spective schemes seemsto me like trying to extract should be understood as a mysterious combina- the sunbeams from cucumbers.” The book is full tion of mathematics and painting”. Piero is a great of imaginative comments, mostly in the notes. I painter;Piero is a greatmathematician. will give a few examples. At the risk of seeming unscholarly, Field forgoes correcting errors in the Piero as a Painter, Piero as a “apparently relevant literature rather than stir my Mathematician own and my readers’ unhappy memories of maths In the introduction to the book under review, Field homework that came back covered with a teacher’s writes (p. 1): “Piero della Francesca is now best commentsin red”(p.5). remembered as a painter. He has a secure position In order to have a deeper understanding of in the history of Italian Renaissance Art. However Piero’s mathematics, the author refers to Luca Pa- inhisownlifetime,andforsometimethereafter,he cioli (1445–1517), the mathematician and author was also known as a mathematician. In his detailed of the famous book De divina proportione (On the scholarly monograph on Piero’s painting, Eugenio Divine Proportion) [15], with drawings by Leonardo Battisti went so far as to say that there should be da Vinci, where of course divina proportione refers a further volume to consider Piero’s activity as to the so-called Golden Section.
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