Piero della Francesca

Widely considered the central figure of fifteenth-century painting, Piero della Francesca is also the most modern of all Renaissance painters. To our post-Cubist eyes, Piero’s most famous work, his fresco cycle “The Legend of the True Cross” at Arezzo in Tuscany, conjures nothing so much as Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings; his serene articulations of architecture and perspective bring other modern traditions and painters to mind, such as Giorgio de Chirico. But it was Philip Guston...