Piero della Francesca | Madonna di Senigallia (1478-1480)
   
 
Piero della Francesca | Madonna di Senigallia (1478-1480)
 
 
The Madonna di Senigallia is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, finished around 1474. It is housed in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, in the Ducal Palace of Urbino.
The painting was originally in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie extra moenia of Senigallia (Marche), whence the current name.

The 1950s restoration showed the high quality of Piero della Francesca's treatment of light, as well as the influence of Flemish masters on it in details such as the basket with linen gauze, the coral and the fabric covering the Madonna's head. The light, which realistically enters from the window on the left, is a symbol of the Virgin's conception. The linen in the basket is instead an allusion to her purity, while the case for hosts in the shelf and the coral hanging from Jesus' necklace both hint to the Eucharist sacrifice. The staring, thoughtful immobility of all the characters would be also an allusion to the latter.
The painting, originally in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Urbino, is quite different from Piero's previous production. The faces still have an expression of aloofness and of superior rational wisdom, but they also convey a sense of precious, almost exotic, beauty. This is one of the paintings in which the artist most clearly reveals his interst in light values, both in terms of reflections and of magical transparencies. From Mary's veil, slightly puckered on her forehead with subtle light variations, to the coral necklace around the Child's neck, to the angels' shining pearls - these are all effects which, together with the light streaming in from the window, and forming a perfectly geometrical shape on the end wall, will appear again and again in Dutch painting of the 17th century.

The blond hair of the angel on the left, because of the reflection of the light coming in from behind, acquires an almost magical golden glow, as though it were a natural halo.

 

Piero della Francesca

 
Polyptych of the Misericordia       The Baptism of Christ       St. Jerome in Penitence       St. Jerome and a Donor      Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta Praying

in Front of St. Sigismund       Portrait of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta      The History of the True Cros      The Flagellation of Christ       Polyptych of Saint

Augustine       Resurrection       Madonna del parto       Nativity       Polyptych of Perugia       Madonna and Child with Saints (Montefeltro Altarpiece)     

Paired portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza       Madonna di Senigallia       Saint Mary Magdalene

Art in Tuscany | Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists | Piero della Francesca
 
 
   
   
 
 

This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia articles Piero della Francesca, Madonna di Senigallia, and Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, published under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Piero della Francesca.

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Podere Santa Pia, garden view, April
  
The Maremma and Monte Christo,
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Santa Trinita Florence
Piazza della Santissima Annunziata
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Choistro dello Scalzo, Florence
         


Montefalco
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Florence, Duomo
         
Urbino | Galleria Nazionale delle Marche

    

The small hill town of Urbino, in the Marche, experienced a great cultural flowering in the 15th century, attracting artists and scholars from all over Italy and beyond, and influencing cultural developments elsewhere in Europe. Urbino is the hometown of Raphael and architect Donato Bramante, but the town owes much of its fame to the Duke of Montefeltro. This mercenary general turned Urbino into an important Renaissance center, attracting artists such as Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello and Giovanni Santi.

The Ducal Palace is one of the most important monuments in Italy andis listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site. The construction of the Ducal Palace was begun for Duke Federico III da Montefeltro around the mid-fifteenth century by the Florentine Maso di Bartolomeo. The new construction included the pre-existing Palace of the Jole. Luciano Laurana, an architect from Dalmatia who had been influenced by Brunelleschi's cloisters in Florence, designed the façade, the famous courtyard and the great entrance staircase. Laurana's light and noble arcaded courtyard at Urbino rivals that of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome as the finest of the Renaissance. Overcoming the exigencies of the clifflike site, which made an irregular massing of architecture necessary, from the 1460s onwards Laurana created what contemporaries considered the ideal princely dwelling. Many of the refined Early Renaissance carved details are so similar to features in paintings by Piero della Francesca that scholars have debated his possible input in the execution of Laurana's plan.
After Laurana's departure from Urbino in 1472, works were continued by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who was mainly responsible for the façade decoration.

The Galleria Nazionale delle Marche (National Gallery of the Marche), housed in the palace, is one of the most important collection of Renaissance art in the world. It includes important works by artists such as Santi, Van Wassenhove (a Last Supper with portraits of the Montefeltro family and the court), Melozzo da Forlì, Raphael, Piero della Francesca (with the famous Flagellation), Paolo Uccello, Timoteo Viti, and other 15th century artists, as well as a late Resurrection by Titian.