The master of atmosphere.

The longer one looks at a work by Piero della Francesca, this peculiar sense may begin to take hold. Something hard to describe but I will try my best. It is that feeling like you’ve walked into a scene by mistake, an actor who’s come in too early on his cue and now finds time seeming to stand still.

I would indeed relate this work to dramatic performance as whilst most people would agree that the work of a great playwright cannot be fully appreciated in all of it’s dimensions without first being seen performed on stage; there are those who would glance at a small printed copy of a renaissance masterwork and then claim to have some broad grasp of the genre and its allegedly formulaic components – despite having just viewed said work in an as equally removed improper context as the former example.

There was a period not long ago when I too would have been the same impertinent, student; however last week I spent some time in the company of the maestro, Piero, and while not physically present in the Cappella Maggiore of the Franciscan church in Arezzo, I was nevertheless able to acquaint myself with his figures, principally those in his famed fresco cycle depicting the Legend of the True Cross, a panel of which I spent five days painting after with both difficulty and admiration.

These frescos were painted life-size and were intended to be viewed so, and despite the ethereal light which the artist conveys with such iconic effect, the tangible presence of his figures and the believable, often unflatteringly vulnerable expressions he gives them, are at the same time so convincing. If Raphael “embellishes” to give an unapologetically hopeful vision of our world, then Piero presents us a more familiar and believable kind of tableaux, albeit at the expense of comfort.

If Leonardo mastered in art the way that light infuses and reflects the forms of our world and Michelangelo expanded the monumental potential of the human form in fresco and marble, then perhaps Piero could be appropriately considered the master of conveying atmosphere in paint. So convincing is this illusion, one indeed feels like having walked into a stage performance at a moment of pivotal importance and though espial we may be, the watching goes both ways.

The former master of Michelangelo, Domenico Ghirlandaio, painted some stupendous frescos perhaps most notably in the Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence where his scenes depicting the life of St John the Baptist, have withstood the measure of time with their own considerable presence.

Not just content with painting his subjects in grand architectural settings, (a common trend at the time allowing artists to display mathematical and geometrical knowledge, disciplines which were held in greater prestige than painting) Ghirlandaio would often depict at least one figure in a scene looking directly at the viewer, drawing from us our sympathy, our culpability and our witness. Piero often does this too and leaves us nowhere else to look but within ourselves. Truly these are not works of idealised decoration to sit daintily in our periphery but rather invitations to explore where we fit into these strangely muted and yet psychologically invasive studies.

I say ‘muted’ as the colour pallet, particularly in these frescos seems relaxed in calling upon our attention, at least not to distract from the subject being depicted. Colour is used in a natural, non-jarring way and measures itself to a satisfying order. As choreographed as the people before us, the half-dozen prominent hues (Brown, Blue, Green, Grey, Red and White) sit in symmetrical balance with one another, greatly satisfying the eye. But as was intended, our gaze remains mostly drawn to reading the scene as a story, and it would have certainly dawned on the contemporaneous viewer that though the Queen of Sheba kneels prayerfully in this idyllic garden Piero has painted, her mind and ours are called to visions of the future Cross and the land that will be torn asunder and that perhaps just beyond those seemingly inviting hills, lies Calvary.