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Do you see what I see?

By AcademicElephant Posted in Culture — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Piero della Francesca, Nativity, 1470-75

Piero was unusual for a Renaissance artist in that he was also a mathematician and civic leader, interests that he integrated into his painting. Piero was expert in geometry, which he employed to create the impression of a three dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface via one-point perspective. He was also a pioneer of formal abstraction, as he reduced objects in his works to geometric forms--and so the Virgin's head becomes an perfect ovoid and the Christ child's body a cylinder. His pioneering abstraction made him a hero to many early 20th-century artists, but his use of it had a very different meaning from what you would find in, say, Picasso. For Piero, abstraction was not simply an intellectual exercise; the pure geometric forms expressed spiritual purity. Both his mastery of one-point and his tendency towards abstraction demonstrated that artistic creation was a cerebral as well as a physical act that deserved the same respect as other intellectual arts such as mathematics. Such an assertion may seem self-evident to us today, but in the fifteenth century, artists were generally viewed as manual craftsmen; in a work such as this, Piero makes a visual argument for a much more elevated status.

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The setting of Piero's Nativity is specific and clearly recognizable--it is not Bethlehem, but the artist's beloved hometown of Borgo San Sepulchro, where he was active in local politics. The town was named for the Holy Sepulchre, and its citizens felt a strong spiritual connection with the Holy Land. Piero had visualized this affinity in an earlier fresco for the town hall, and he took his responsibility for the governance of this special place very seriously. By making the Nativity present at Borgo San Sepulchro, Piero suggests that the civic excellence of his town makes it the appropriate setting for this miracle.

Three men witness the intimate encounter between Virgin and Child. Their Renaissance dress makes it unlikely that they are shepherds or Magi; they are contemporary Borgo San Sepulchrans, and the central figure in the red cap is generally identified as the artist. While Piero typically included himself in his larger works, he usually played a peripheral role. Such a large and engaged self-portrait is unusual, and suggests that this was a work painted for his own satisfaction. It is profoundly personal in a spiritual sense. As we saw with the Lippi Medici Nativity, there is a tradition of showing the Virgin and Child in the wilderness, but rather than the mysticism of Lippi, Piero's vision is one of a miracle that takes place in his own time and space, with himself as witness. He shows us the Virgin kneeling before her Child in silent adoration as she contemplates his future sacrifice of which she has foreknowledge--and which is represented by the name of the town in the background. The two are attended not by the traditional ox and ass or adoring Saints, but by a chorus of angels who play lutes and sing in celebration of this event. They physically define a sort of sacred stage that serves as a platform for the Child, who is further protected by an extension of the Virgin's mantle.

Piero went blind shortly after completing the Nativity, and did not paint for the last decade of his life. What makes the painting so poignant for me are questions to which we can never know the true answers, such as: did he know he was going blind? Was this an intensely personal work done to sum up his art before the lights literally went out? Is that why music, that other mathematical art that he could still enjoy once blind, plays such a central role? Piero seems to be the only human who can, in the context of the painting, see the miracle taking place in front of him. Is he suggesting that as his human sight failed, his spiritual vision became more accute and he could see what others could not? As I said, there is no way to know, but it seems clear from this painting that even as Piero became increasingly physically infirm, his faith remained unshakable and he concluded his career as an artist with a hopeful vision of the Son of Man made manifest in Borgo San Sepulchro.