Art Holiday to Sansepolcro - Monterchi - Arezzo

 
These three small towns in Tuscany are unlikely spots in which to find Renaissance art of the highest caliber, except that Piero della Francesca was born in Sansepolcro in the early fifteenth-century and remained devoted to this region during his long life. Piero, who studied painting in Florence during the 1440s, epitomizes the achievements of mid fifteenth-century Italian art: there is a purity and clarity to his angelic faces, a weightiness to his robed figures, and a measured geometry to his painted spaces. Following in the footsteps of this artist has given rise to a tour known among art historians as the “Piero trail.”
 
You will need a car to travel, as these towns are not conveniently accessible by public transportation. They can be viewed in any sequence, depending on your point of origin. I suggest beginning in Sansepolcro, where Piero's earliest surviving painting, the breathtaking Misericordia Altarpiece, hangs in the Museo Civico, along with a later fresco (detached) of the Resurrectio. Then, proceed to Monterchi, where on a gentle hill outside town one of Piero's most moving works of art still hangs in a small chapel. Finally, see the Legend of the True Cross frescoes in the church of S. Francesco in Arezzo.

 

Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto , Monterchi

Piero's fresco, the Madonna del Parto (Madonna of Childbirth), originally adorned the high altar of Santa Maria della Momentana in Monterchi, but when this small church was destroyed in the eighteenth-century to make room for a cemetery, the fresco was detached and remounted in this one surviving chapel. The painting depicts a subject somewhat unusual in Italian art: a very pregnant Madonna. The laces down the front and sides of her dress have been loosened to accommodate her swollen belly, and she rests her hand -- as pregnant women protectively do -- over her womb. Commissioned in the 1450s, the painting was likely intended to attract female devotion. Local women coming to church would recognize in the Madonna's costume and gesture an expectant mother, as perhaps they themselves were or hoped to be.


But whereas childbirth in this period was fraught with danger -- a woman routinely made out her will beforehand, just in case -- the Madonna was believed to have escaped the fear and pain of normal pregnancy and labor. According to the medieval St. Bernard, she was “fertile without sin, pregnant without heaviness, and bore a child without pain.” The winged angels who pull aside the canopy to reveal her announce the specialness of this birth. At the same time, however, the Madonna is humble in her loosened blue cloth dress, accessible to the prayers of devout women in this small rural church. Eyes downcast, she reflects on the fate of her unborn son, and already seems to know the loving weight of being a mother.