Polyptych of Saint Anthony

1460-70 - Panel 338 x 230 cm - Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia

Vasari says that this is one of the several works that Piero painted during his stay in Perugia. He describes this polyptych , which was ordered by the sisters of the convent of Sant'Antonio da Padova, with great admiration. This complex painting, now housed in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Perugia, was started immediately after Piero's return from Rome, but is was finished only several years later.
The central part of the composition, with the Virgin with the Child and the Saints (St. Anthony, St. John Baptist, St. Francis and St. Elisabeth) on a damask-cloth background, shows the artist's knowledge of the approach of the Spanish painters of the time, whom he could have met in Rome. This panel can therefore be dated to the years around 1460. On the predella there are three panels that show Saint Anthony from Padua resuscitating a child, the Stigmata of Saint Francis and Saint Elisabeth saving a child fallen in a well. There are also two medallions between the main panel and the predella. The latter is an extraordinary work of art: it shows Piero's typical handling of space and light values, on a smaller scale, with an emphasis on the white walls, on the splashes of lights and shadows in the night scene outside. These scenes, where bodies and shadows are fully three-dimensional, became a model for predellas followed by the most famous Italian artists of the late XV century, such as the young Perugino and Bartolomeo della Gatta and, through Antonello da Messina, down to Naples, with the Maestro di San Severino e Sossio. Piero finished the polyptych a few years later: above the decorated gothic frame he painted his superb Annunciation. The lack of unity with the polyptych central part has induced some scholars to hypothesise that Piero might have added this Annunciation much later. Still, the polyptych has its own structural continuity; Piero simply cut the upper part, which originally had to be rectangular, turning it into a pinnacle-shaped frame. Here too Piero went beyond his client's restrictions based on traditional artistic taste and gave us one of the most perfect examples of the use of perspective. Through his mastery in the use of oil colours, Piero della Francesca produced amazing details on the series of capitals that run towards the vanishing point. Every architrave and every column project a thin shadow in the attractive arched cloister that goes beyond the inspiration he took from Alberti's architecture. The subtle analysis of the wall decorations reaches a unique level, with every single element included in an organic space. Distances are calculated perfectly, they are neither forced nor artificial, but they are the result of realistic handling of light and atmosphere.