Polyptych of Perugia by Piero della Francesca

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Polyptych of Perugia by Piero della Francesca (1460). Early Renaissance tempera.

The Polyptych of Perugia is a complex of paintings by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, finished around 1470. It is housed in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia, Italy.

The work was executed for the new Franciscan convent of Sant'Antonio da Padova in Perugia, most likely in the years following his sojourn in Rome. It portrays the Virgin enthroned with the Child in the central part, flanked by several saints: Anthony of Padua and John the Baptist on the left, Francis and Elizabeth of Hungary in the right. In the cusp is the Annunciation. The upper part of the predella shows the saints Clare and Agatha, while in the lower part are miracles stories of the main Franciscan saints.

The central part of the polyptych shows a still archaic formula, both in the composition of the frame and in the gold backgrounds: Piero della Francesca was in fact called to complete a work already begun by a local painter.[2] The figures are impressively robust and full-bodied, the realism of iconography innovative and the perspective of the niche throne on which Mary sits is meticulously worked out.[3] Of lesser quality are the predella panels, which are in fact attributed to assistants. More innovative and typical of the artist's style is the Annunciation, set in a bright cloister, whose illusionist view is considered amongst the greatest perspective renderings of Renaissance art.

Among the many works that Piero painted in Perugia, the historian describes this polyptych was commissioned by the nuns of the convent of Sant'Antonio da Padova. This complex painting, was begun shortly after Piero's return from Rome, but was not completed for several years.

The central part of the composition, the Madonna and Child with Saints Anthony, John the Baptist, Francis and Elizabeth, reveals in its unusual damask-like background the artist's acquaintance with a trend of contemporary Spanish painting, which Piero would have had the opportunity to see in Rome. The polyptych is also made up of three predella panels showing St Anthony of Padua resurrecting a child, the Stigmatisation of St Francis and St Elizabeth saving a boy who had fallen down a well, as well as two roundels placed between the main panel and the predella. 

The quality of this predella is extraordinary: Piero's characteristic spatial and light values are achieved here, on a small scale, by emphasizing the white walls of the interiors, the splashes of light and the deep shadows of the night scene in the open countryside. These scenes, where the bodies and even the shadows are fully three-dimensional, were to set an example for predella panels which was widely followed by Italian artists of the second half of the 15th-century, from the young Perugino to Bartolomeo della Gatta and, via Antonello da Messina, to the Neapolitan 'Master of Saints Severino and Sossio'. A few years later, Piero della Francesca completed the Perugia polyptych: above the ornate and still basically Gothic frame, he painted his extraordinary Annunciation.

The lack of compositional unity with the central part of the polyptych has led some scholars to suggest that Piero simply added this Annunciation to the altarpiece, much later.

According to others, the whole polyptych has a structural unity; Piero simply cut out the top part, originally intended to be rectangular, and transformed it into a sort of cusped crowning. Once again Piero has succeeded in overcoming the limitations imposed by patrons with old-fashioned artistic taste, giving us one of the most perfect examples of his use of perspective. 

Thanks also to his use of oil paints, Piero della Francesca achieves the extraordinarily detailed depiction of the series of capitals, running towards the vanishing point. Each architrave, and each column as well, projects a thin strip of shadow into the splendid cloister arcade, which appears to go beyond any inspiration derived from Alberti's architecture. The subtle analysis of the decorations painted on the walls reaches an unprecedented level; yet everything is contained in a single and organic space. Distances, so perfectly calculated, are neither forced nor artificial: they are conveyed by the realistic light and atmosphere.

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