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Piero della Francesca in America: From Sansepolcro to the East Coast

Nathaniel Silver with essays by James R. Banker and Machtelt Israëlsand an Appendix by Giacomo Guazzini and Elena Squillantini

The Frick CollectionNew York

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition Piero della Francesca in America, organized by Nathaniel Silver at The Frick Collection, New York, February 12 to May 19, 2013.

Copyright © 2013 The Frick Collection, New York. All rights reserved.

This publication was organized at The Frick Collection by Elaine Koss, Editor in Chief, and Giulia Di Filippo, Associate Editor.

Design: The Oliphant Press, New York

Support for the exhibition is generously provided by Mrs. Henry Clay Frick II, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Hester Diamond, the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation.

The catalogue has been underwritten by The Christian Humann Foundation and a gift from an anonymous donor in memory of Charles Ryskamp.

Front cover: Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels (cat. 5, detail)

Frontispiece: Reconstruction of the Sant’Agostino altarpiece (oblique view) based on that by Machtelt Israëls, with revised predella and lateral pier base panel arrangement and with added frame (largely hypothetical). The missing central panel probably depicted either the Virgin and Child Enthroned or the Coronation of the Virgin. The pinnacles are hypothetical. Rendering by Joseph Godla.

isbn: 978-0-912114-57-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012951583

Borgo San Sepolcro is the most historically correct name for Piero’s native city. The more current form, Sansepolcro, is used in this volume in discussions of more modern issues and in captions of contemporary images.

The Appendix was translated from the Italian by Marguerite Shore.

The map graphic is by Lucas Chilczuk.

Foreword • Ian Wardropper 7

Acknowledgments • Nathaniel Silver 9

i. An Old Master for the New World • Nathaniel Silver 13

ii. Piero “in terra nostra”: Image-Making for Borgo San Sepolcro • Nathaniel Silver 27

iii. Piero della Francesca’s Panel Paintings for Borgo San Sepolcro • Machtelt Israëls 47 iv. Piero della Francesca: The Commission and Completion of

the Sant’Agostino Altarpiece • James R. Banker 69

v. Catalogue • Nathaniel Silver

1. Saint Augustine 85

2. Saint John the Evangelist 91

3. Saint Apollonia, Saint Leonard (?), Saint Monica 98

4. The Crucifixion 109

5. Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels 117

6. Hercules 123

Appendix: A Visual Context for Piero—The Reconstruction of the Frescoes in the Apse of the Church of Sant’Agostino in Sansepolcro • Giacomo Guazzini and Elena Squillantini 129

Selected Bibliography 135

Photography Credits 149

ContentsTo the citizens of Sansepolcro, past, present, and future.

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The church of Sant’Agostino in Borgo San Sepolcro is today deconsecrated and used in part as an auditorium. It was built between the last decade of the thirteenth and the first decade of the fourteenth century, on a simple rectangular plan with a pentagonal apse facing south (fig. 64).1 The Augustinians who maintained the church remained until 1555, when they were forced to move into the Pieve di Santa Maria in order to make room for a community of Poor Clares. On this occasion the architect Alberto Alberti was entrusted with a radical renovation of the building fabric of Sant’Agostino; thus the consecration of the new church (rededicated to Saint Clare in 1577) marked the completion of his task.2 The following analysis enables us to indicate the original location of the high altar (now lost) before Alberti’s interventions and to suggest where Piero della Francesca’s altarpiece once stood. Furthermore, we can regain the context of his polyptych by reconstructing the original location of several frescoes that surrounded it.

Alberti in fact dramatically changed the appearance of the church. He divided the interior into two levels: the ground floor, covered by new domical vaults, and a dormitory on the upper floor with the original timber-trussed roof. A series of side chapels was constructed in the nave, and the fourteenth-century pentagonal apse was cut off from the rest of the nave by the insertion of a wall intended to create a wide chancel for the nuns’ choir. In the interior of the apse, four large piers—still

visible today—were placed against the walls to support the floor above.

Three windows originally illuminated the apse. During the renovations, a central lancet window on the south side of the apse was partially filled in and divided into two large windows to illuminate both the nuns’ choir on the lower floor and the dormitory on the upper floor. The small lateral lancet windows, located on the east and west sides of the apse, were also completely filled in.

The apse was previously framed by a triumphal arch, fragments of which are preserved on the upper floor (fig. 65). Analysis of the roof systems for similar pentagonal

Appendix A Visual Context for Piero—The Reconstruction of the Frescoes in the Apse of the Church of Sant’Agostino in Sansepolcro

Giacomo Guazzini and Elena Squillantini

Fig. 65. Interior view of the Church of Santa Chiara (formerly Sant’Agostino), remains of the triumphal archlegend

1 High altar (possible location)

2 Tomb of Vanni Carsidoni (1374)

3 Chapel of Saint Peter “sive di Magii” (Asinari; documented in 1448, 1459)

4 Altar of the Virgin (documented in 1474; possible location)

5 Rood screen or cancelli (documented in 1451, 1477; possible location)

6 Chapel of Saint John (Cresci, fifteenth century; from 1503, Bartolomeo Martelli, dedicated to Corpus Christi)

7 Choir stalls

Fig. 64. Authors’ reconstruction of the groundplan of Sant’Agostino before the sixteenth-century renovation (drawings by Giorgio Guazzini)

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apses suggests that the Augustinian church in Borgo San Sepolcro had a sexpartite cruciform vault, part of which rested on the triumphal arch and the other part on the four corners of the apse.3 In this way the position of the keystone, which can be placed exactly at the intersection of the diagonals located on the two straight sides, east and west, provides an important clue for the position of the high altar, where Piero della Francesca’s altarpiece once stood.

Piero’s polyptych was originally surrounded by several frescoes painted onto the walls of the apse that were all concealed under layers of whitewash in the sixteenth century, when the polyptych was transferred to the Pieve di Santa Maria and subsequently dismantled. Between the 1950s and 1960s, restorers revealed and detached a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frescoes that are today preserved in the Museo Civico.4 Another

fresco that once adorned this Augustinian church is the famous Saint Julian by Piero della Francesca, also in the Museo Civico.5

The decorative context for Piero’s polyptych can be reimagined from the fragments of the frescoes that once surrounded it. Photographs of the frescoes taken before they were detached and moved to the Museo Civico have made it possible to develop a precise reconstruction of the apse decorations.6 The first work that we can place in this context with certainty is The Annunciation (fig. 66, c, 145 x 180 cm), which was located on the straight east side of the apse. A little further along, on the oblique southeast side, there was Saint Augustine’s Vision of the Holy Trinity (fig. 66, d, 280 x 224 cm), beneath which the Carsidoni tomb is mentioned in 1374 (fig. 64, no. 2). The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino (fig. 67, e, 252 x

198 cm), along with the later fresco with Judith (fig. 67, f, 216 x 104 cm)by Giuliano Amadei, superimposed in part over the former, were located on the oblique right wall (southwest side), while the large fresco depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints Sebastian(?), Anthony Abbot, and Catherine of Alexandria (fig. 67, g, 270 x 320 cm) was located on the straight west side of the apse. Leaving the tribune area, on the east wall of the church and close to the presbytery, there was a chapel with an arcosolium (fig. 64, no. 3), decorated with a fresco of a Crucifixion of Christ between the Virgin and the Grieving Evangelist, and, in the intrados, a young Apostle Saint on the left, a Mystic Lamb at the center, Saint Augustine on the right, and in the left jamb, slightly above a repository for the Eucharist, a Saint Peter: all works recently attributed to Antonio d’Anghiari (fig. 66, b).7 The hagiographic fresco with The Blessed Angelo Scarpetti Bestowing a Blessing and Eight Episodes

from His Life (fig. 67, a, 159 x 140 cm) was also located in this side area, in close proximity to this chapel. The right edge of this work, in fact, was placed near the left edge of the chapel, probably close to an entrance to the cloister, and thus also meant for the Augustinians to see daily.

The position of Piero’s fresco of Saint Julian (fig. 67, h, 135 x 105 cm; see fig. 38), which was uncovered in December 1954, is based both on a document from 1503 that indirectly mentions the saint near a side door (still existing but filled in), and on the observations of Superintendent Filippo Rossi and the supervisor of the works, Giuseppe Nomi.8 This hypothesis was accurately confirmed by the fortunate discovery of the trace of the strappo of the fresco, hidden inside a small room built onto the top part of the right-hand wall, at the same level as the nineteenth-century gallery. Nomi, in

Fig. 66. Reconstruction of the apse, east side (graphics and rendering by Giorgio Guazzini) Fig. 67. Reconstruction of the apse, west side (graphics and rendering by Giorgio Guazzini)

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a precise planimetric relief published by Mario Salmi, indicates the point where the fragment was discovered on the west wall of the church, in a small room created in the upper part of the nave during modern restoration work.9 Eugenio Battisti later reported a direct communication from Nomi, stating that the saint’s head was located in a notably elevated position “at the height of 3 ! or 4 meters from the ground.” Thanks to the aforementioned document from 1503 it is possible to link the figure of Saint Julian to a commission by the noble Cresci family who, in the fifteenth century, were patrons of a chapel dedicated to Saint John, replaced in 1503 by Bartolomeo Martelli’s chapel of the Holy Sacrament (see chapter IV).

In addition to the frescoes in the Museo Civico, several fragments remain in situ in Santa Chiara (ex-

Sant’Agostino). In the arcosolium in the southeast corner of the nave (fig. 64, no. 3) is a figure of Saint Peter in papal vestments painted in the fourteenth century. It was revealed only recently when a fifteenth-century fresco was removed. Thanks to archival photographs, it is possible to make out two features in the later fresco: a camel and a male figure wearing a turban suggest that the entire missing scene depicted the Adoration of the Magi. Together both frescoes probably identify this space as the chapel of the family of asinari, the donors of Piero’s polyptych. Documents indicate that they maintained a chapel in Sant’Agostino dedicated to Saint Peter called the chapel of the Magi.10

The reconstruction of the interior of Sant’Agostino allows for a deeper understanding of the local conditions within which the high altarpiece was created

by Piero della Francesca and experienced by viewers. It stood over the lost high altar, which was commissioned in 1348 on the model of the still-existing altar in the Church of San Francesco, and was situated under the central keystone of the apsidal vault (fig. 64, no. 1). In this location Piero’s polyptych would have received light not only from the central lancet window behind, facing south, but also from the smaller lancet windows that opened on to the west and east sides of the apse (fig. 68). Piero conceived of a single light source for the saints depicted on the front of the Augustinian polpytych. This seems to be the natural light falling from the western lancet window, thus presenting Piero’s elegant figures as if bathed in a vespertine light.

notes

We would like to thank, first of all, Giorgio Guazzini for his skill in creating the graphic reconstructions presented here, and for the generous gift of his time. Our heartfelt thanks also go to Andrea De Marchi, James Banker, Machtelt Israëls, Nathaniel Silver, Mariangela Betti, and the staff at the Biblioteca Comunale and the Museo Civico in Sansepolcro, Guido Tigler, Luigi Bizzarri (Filarmonica di Sansepolcro), Raffaella Calamini, don Andrea Czortek, Athos Chimenti, Paolo Quieti, Paola Refice, Jane Donnini (Soprintendenza dei Beni Artistici in Arezzo), don Alberto Gallorini, Maria Cristina Masdea and Andrea Pratesi (Soprintendenza dei Beni Architettonici in Florence), Stefano Polchi, Franco Polcri (Archivio Vescovile in Sansepolcro), Roberto Tollo, don Pietro Vispi (Umbertide), the staff of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, and the staff of the Gabinetto Fotografico degli Uffizi in Florence. The present text is taken from a more extensive piece of research on the Augustinian church in Sansepolcro. For further details and the complete analysis of the subject, see Guazzini-Squillantini forthcoming.

1 Czortek et al. 2009, pp. 19–71, particularly pp. 22–27.2 See Mario Mattei, “Gli Agostiniani a Sansepolcro dal

ibid. XVI al XIX secolo,” in pp. 75–87, and above all Giannotti 1994–95, pp. 287–304, particularly pp. 287–88, p. 290, note 1; Pincelli 2000, pp. 170–72.

3 Like the Duomo in Arezzo, the Basilica of San Nicola in Tolentino and the Church of Sant’Agostino in

Montefalco, with a few variations, derive from the Upper Basilica in Assisi, as do San Francesco in Città di Castello and San Francesco in Cascia, as well as the ancient apse of the local abbey, which probably was the most direct model. See Pistilli 2000, pp. 41–62; Cooper 2001, pp. 1–54; Coden 2011, pp. 333–420, especially pp. 395–400.

4 See the contribution by Francesca Chieli, “Il museo civico di Sansepolcro: una corrispondenza tra i luoghi e le immagini,” in Brilli and Chieli 2002, p. 31, note 23, pp. 35–36.

5 The bibliography on Piero’s Saint Julian is extensive; see Salmi 1955, pp. 230–36; Longhi 1980, pp. 168, 203; Bellosi 1992, p. 37; Battisti 1992, vol. 1, pp. 79–81, vol. 2, pp. 437–38; De Marchi 2008, p. 102, note 20; Dabell 2010, p. 46.

6 Guazzini and Squillantini forthcoming. Two other frescoes from the first half of the fourteenth century now preserved in the Museo Civico come from this church: The Blessed Angelo Scarpetti Bestowing a Blessing with Patron (see fig. 36) and Saint Margaret of Cortona with Saint Peter Martyr.

7 De Marchi 2008, pp. 102–3.8 See Franklin 1999, pp. 474–75. Superintendent Filippo

Rossi, in a letter to the Direzione Generale delle Antichità, writes: “At the bottom the fresco is lost, an opening in the wall having been made at this point.” See Paola Refice, “Del ‘San Giuliano’ e degli altri. Considerazioni sugli affreschi staccato di Piero,” in Brilli and Chieli 2002, Documentary appendix, pp. 91–93.

9 Salmi 1955, pp. 230–36, p. 231, fig. 1.10 In the wills of Giovanna (1446), her husband Simone di

Giovanni (1448), and his brother, Angelo di Giovanni (1459), mention is made of a family chapel called the “capella Sancti Petri que appellatur Capella di Magi,” probably a chapel that was earlier dedicated to Saint Peter and then to the Magi; see the documents in Banker 1987, pp. 645–51, particularly pp. 649–51. This hypothesis is corroborated by the fact that the older denomination is reflected in the singular iconography of Saint Peter wearing papal vestments in the fourteenth-century fresco now visible beneath the fifteenth-century remains of the Adoration. Moreover, the quattrocento Saint Peter that replaced the previous one was located on the left side of the intrados, in the position of honor.

Fig. 68. Reconstruction of the apse, general view with Piero’s polyptych (graphics and rendering by Giorgio Guazzini; hypothetical reconstruction of Piero’s polyptych by Nathaniel Silver)