The medieval walled town of Sansepolcro is far off the tourist path for anyone not enamoured with the art of Piero della
Francesca. It's the birthplace of painters Raffaellino del Colle (1490-1566) and Santi di Tito (1538-1603) and of the Buitoni
pasta empire. The small village founded here around A.D. 1000 was so proud of the bits of the Holy Sepulchre a couple of
pilgrims brought back that the town was named Borgo San Sepolcro. Chances are, if they'd held off on the christening a few
hundred years, the place would now be called Borgo Piero della Francesca, after the monumentally important painter born here
around 1420.
One of the leading lights of the early Renaissance, Piero took the perspective obsession of Florentine masters Masaccio and Paolo Uccello and mixed it with the ethereal posed beauty of the Umbrian school to create a haunting style all his own. Piero's figures are at the same time hyper-posed masses of precision Euclidean geometry and vehicles for a profound expressive naturalism and astute psychological studies.
His backgrounds, even those of the countryside, are masterpieces of architectural volume. His painting has so fascinated the modern world that the connect-the-dots loop of cities preserving his works has
become known as the Piero della Francesca Trail, a pilgrimage route of sorts for art lovers. When Piero's eyesight began to
fail later in life, he wrote two treatises, On the Five Regular Bodies and On Perspective in Painting, which together set the rules
for his universe of perspective and logic, broke down the human body into a geometric machine of perfect proportions, and
became required reading for almost every Renaissance artist. He died near his hometown in 1492.
Piero is somewhere between a cultural hero and a patron saint here. Every Sansepolcran seems to be a Piero expert. The
tourist-office lady argues stridently that Piero's is the first pregnant Madonna. The Fiorentino owner can give a ready discourse
on the man and his art. And there's a tired office worker who climbs the steps to the glass window of the museum's Piero room
every evening--he just pauses and peers through the glass at the Piero della Francesca masterpieces inside for a few moments
before walking back down the stairs and heading home.
The most important outbuildins
Sansepolcro's only outstanding sight is the Museo Civico, housed in a 15th-century building that was once the Palazzo
Comunale. An outdoor staircase runs to the former main entrance, now a glassed-in doorway where you can see into one of the museum's main halls. There you can gaze on Piero della Francesca's masterpieces at any time of day or night--Sansepolcro's singularly unselfish way of opening its artistic patrimony to everyone, regardless of whether they buy a ticket to the museum. One local, nodding approvingly, called the arrangement "highly advanced."
The palace is connected by a bridge to a perpendicular building, the 14th-century Palazzo Pretorio, embedded with two orderly rows of della Robbian terra-cotta coats of arms left by previous mayors. Both palaces were heavily restructured in the 19th century.
If you pass under their connecting bridge and cross the street, you'll be on a small piazza flanked on the right by San Francesco and the left by Santa Maria delle Grazie. The former has some baroque canvases and a 1304 Gothic sandstone altar carved with reliefs; the latter is fronted by a 1518 double loggia and preserves a small Madonna in Prayer by Raffaellino del Colle and a wood ceiling carved by Alberto Alberti.
Back under the bridge connecting the palazzi, you'll see the huge portico of the late-16th-century Palazzo della Laudi across from them. Next door is Sansepolcro's Duomo, with a Romanesque-Gothic interior.
On the right wall is a fresco of the Madonna with Saints Thomas Becket and Catherine of Alexandria (of whom only the iconographic wheel remains) painted by a Rimini-school artist in 1383. Just past it is Santi di Tito's baroque Incredulity of St. Thomas (1575), followed by a faded Bartolomeo della Gatta fresco of the Crucifixion. Behind the high altar is Niccolò di Segna's polyptych, whose "Resurrection of Christ" scene heavily influenced Piero della Francesca's famous version now in the Museo Civico. To the altar's left is a 10th-century wood Volto Santo crucifixion. Between the first two altars on the left wall is an Ascension by Umbrian master Perugino, restored in 1997, as well as a Resurrection by Raffellino del Colle.
Just below the Duomo is Sansepolcro's main square, Piazza Torre di Berta, named after a tower demolished in World War II. Off its right side runs the main shopping street and passeggiata drag, Via XX Settembre.
Three blocks down is the intersection with Via L. Pacioli, which leads all the way to the southern city walls at Via Santa Croce and the deconsecrated church of San Lorenzo.
Only die-hard Rosso Fiorentino fans need bother hiking down, as there's no guarantee you'll find anyone in the lace-making school or Choral Society headquarters next door to let you inside to see Rosso's darkened Deposition.
The "Museo Civico"
Though most famous for its remarkable Piero della Francesca works, Sansepolcro's museum also has paintings by native baroque masters Santi di Tito and Raffaellino del Colle and a piece by Luca Signorelli. First, though, a staircase off the entrance leads down to a small didactic collection of rehistoric remains (stone tools and bits of ceramics) as well as a room of churchly vestments and reliquary busts alongside a courtly 13th-century stone frieze of knights and monsters.
Room 1 sports a 19th-century terra-cotta bust of Piero della Francesca. Among the 17th-century works in room 2 is a late mannerist Crucifixion painted by il Passignano or someone in his circle. Stairs lead up to a pair of rooms housing detached 15th-century frescoes by unknown local artists, some with their sinopie (preliminary sketches).
Room 3 houses Piero's Madonna della Misericordia (1445-62), reassembled without its frame. The Mary of Mercy spreads her cloak around kneeling donors (the one to the left of her, looking up, is believed by some to be a self-portrait by Piero), while a sleepy-eyed St. John the Baptist and other saints look on. The central panel and Sts. John and Sebastian are certainly from Piero's brush, as is the Crucifixion above and the Angel and Virgin Annunciate panels flanking it. The rest were probably worked on by assistants or a miniaturist.
Room 4 starts with two detached frescoes by Piero, one San Ludovico da Tolosa (1460, and attributed by some to Piero's student Lorentino), and a famous partial fresco of San Giuliano (1455-58) discovered in the 1950s under the whitewash of Sant'Agostino (later Santa Chiara)
Church.
At the end of the room is one of Piero's indisputable masterpieces, the Resurrection of Christ. Painted in 1463 for another room in this palace and moved here in 1480, this work made Piero's modern reputation--art historians began paying attention to it and Piero in general after 1925, when Aldous Huxley dubbed it the "best picture in the world." The fresco-and-tempera work displays a resounding naturalness in its perfect perspective and the almost uncanny modeling of the figures and faces. At the same time it's imbued with an eerie spirituality, or rather supernaturalness, in the deadpan gaze of the risen Christ--here, truly a god in human form--and in the soldiers who look less asleep than under a magic spell of suspended animation. Piero lets
the power of his art speak through his incomparable technique, leaving the religious symbolism to be relayed simply through the background: As the Savior rises from the dead, the trees and the land come back to life around him from left to right. The second sleeping soldier on the left in the brown armor is thought to be a self-portrait of Piero. This fresco may be one of the
few pieces of art that actually did save its city from destruction. In 1944 a British commanding officer had orders to bomb Nazi troops occupying the city. The officer, having read Huxley's words, held off the attack until the Germans withdrew on their own.
Room 5 has a 16th-century Umbrian-school Assumption and a processional banner painted in 1505 by Luca Signorelli with the Crucifixion (with a beautiful group of mourning Marys) on one side and a St. Anthony Abbot and San Egidio on the other.
Matteo di Giovanni's 1440 cathedral altarpiece is missing the central Baptism of Christ panel by Piero (it's in London's National Gallery), but the St. Peter and St. Paul are worth a study, and (in an innovative touch) a slide projector fills in the missing gap with a blurry reproduction. Room 6 has two paintings by Raffaellino del Colle, a huge 1526 Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin and a detached fresco of St. Leo I (1520-30), as well as a Martyrdom of St. Quentin (1518) by quintessential mannerist master Pontormo. The last few rooms are filled with mannerist and baroque canvases, including five by Santi di Tito.
Events
Sansepolcro, the birth place of Piero della Francesca in September hosts the Renaissance revival, with traditional parties and games of the period. During this month there are traditional parades
where the participants dress in period costume, re enacting the times and paintings of Piero della Francesca.
Sansepolcro’s many restaurants re create the recipes of the times and in the many squares of beautiful City shows and concerts are held throughout the night. The climax of the festivities culminates with the cross bow ( Palio della Balestra ) competition between Sansepolcro and Gubbio in the main square. One may also admire the dexterity of the Flag Wavers of Sansepolcro as they cast there flags high in to the evening sky. With their games they have exported through out the world the beauty and the authenticity of our traditions.
Who ever visits Sansepolcro will remain fascinated by the magic atmosphere of the past as it is re-enacted within the Ancient Borgo of Sansepolcro.
