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Piero's Light
In the heart of Tuscany, Piero della Francesca became a painter and mathematician at the dawn of the Renaissance, revealing his innovative mind in some of the best known images from that period, and in his unusual writings on geometry. Yet as a personality, Piero remains a mystery. He leaves an enigmatic legacy that ranges from the merging of religion and mathematics to his use of perspective to make painting a “true science.”In this engaging narrative, Larry Witham reveals how Piero was part of the philosophical revival of Platonism, an ancient worldview that would shape art, religion, and science’s transition toward modernity. Just sixteen of Piero’s paintings survive, but these images and his writings would fuel some of the greatest art historical debates of all time.Through Witham’s wide research, Piero emerges as a figure who marks a turning point in Western culture. Our past understanding of faith, beauty, and knowledge has been radically altered by a secular age, and the story of Piero helps us understand how this has taken place. The search for Piero has continued among both intrepid scholars and art lovers of all kinds, and it is no few artists in history take us as deeply into the intellectual excitement of the Renaissance as Piero della Francesca.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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92 people want to read
About the author
Larry Witham
33 books19 followersLarry Witham is an author, editor, journalist, and artist. His new novel, The Haunted Artist (2025) is the fourth in the Julian Peale Art-Crime Investigator Series. Witham is the author of nineteen books (six of them novels), and was a finalist in the 2015 Pen Literary Awards for biography. He began his writing career as a daily newspaper reporter in Washington D.C. Witham has received several national awards for his newspaper work and books, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for a newspaper series he co-wrote. He was Project Editor for the ten-volume Templeton Press science-and-religion series. A painter by avocation, his new novel character, Julain Peale, investigates crime and intrigue in the artworld. Witham lives with his wife in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 28, 2018
(To my Goodreads chums: this review, I’m going to sink my teeth into, and because it's of specialized interest, you can skip it and we’ll see each next time.)
Ok. Now that they’re gone.
I’m giving this book 3 stars because I have good good heart.
But, see, I don’t want shit on this guy’s book. He probably spent a long time on it. If you’re coming in off the street, the party hasn’t started yet. 19 ratings annnnd, hold.
(And to tell a secret, I’m kind of writing my own pop history book of the Renaissance, so stuff like this is gold to me. Well, kind of, electroplated knick-knacks anyway.)
The writing: Do I expect a pop history book of the Renaissance to be written well? I don’t. This cat isn’t a historian. But, I expect to be kept interested, and this book did. It was too non-descript, without charm or character. There were no rough surfaces. Writing like this is probably held under sanitizer until is imperfection are cleaned off. So at the end (Spoiler?) the writer says “Here are five reasons why I like Piero Della Francesca. 1…” and I’m thinking, where was the adult in the room to say “Eh, maybe that’s not so hot.”
2 quick examps: When we got to the Wolf of Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta, was hardly touched upon. All the writer said was that he led a army at the age of fourteen. Never mind that he was a pederast. (his son no less) That he used his neighbor as a toilet, and he married a bum (well, not all of those, that’s the kind of stuff I do in my telling of SM).
Likewise in Urbino with the Duke Federico Montefeltro. The reason the duke has a hook nose was because one of his friends said, “Since you’re a cyclops already if you remove the bridge of your nose, you’ll be able to see better” The whole profile = antiquity/medallionesque, not as cool. Why wouldn’t you use this?
The first half of the book is fine and the adroit reader will bail after that. Part due is the dash through the centuries and artistic movements and becomes the book it has to be. It’s an overgrab to go for Cézanne & Seurat. Piero Dell Francesca is good enough without needing to be the patron saint of Formalism. We wind by historians and developments of philosophical thoughts like montages in action flicks. If any of these subjects got talked about in a satisfying way, it’d be worth it but they don’t. Instead its History’s Greatest Hits.
Now, is it stupid of me to complain about conventions like this? That books that do this, shouldn’t do this? I guess so. It feels that way.
Finally, Platonism. Plato as a way to the Old Father. If you can light a lamp for Plato now, you can probably later see the Holy Spirit avoid the landing spikes of pigeons. If there’s any way we reconcile the divorce between science and faith, it's via Plato. Old school.
And finally secondly, the more science, (neuroscience here) tries to graph down how the arts are beneficial bla-bla-bla, I shrug my shoulders. Paintings and shit, don’t need little egalitarian tidbits to make them worthwhile. I understand that this generation loves to know how many steps they take in a day, and I’m the outside here, but as to a reason to become interested in the arts, it’s a wonky approach. I think nothing could be more faulty than science (not as erroneous, but the way science could be used to turn everyone into pliant conformists) (Here from the Bernhard I read today “And science imitates philosophy; it takes well-known bits of madness and arranges it in new patterns. We live by surprises that we thoughtfully contrive for ourselves—isn’t that pitiable?”) and the arts should distance itself from it the same way science turned its back on the arts. There, I said it!
I’d recommend the Kenneth Clark book. It’s a good read.
Ok. Now that they’re gone.
I’m giving this book 3 stars because I have good good heart.
But, see, I don’t want shit on this guy’s book. He probably spent a long time on it. If you’re coming in off the street, the party hasn’t started yet. 19 ratings annnnd, hold.
(And to tell a secret, I’m kind of writing my own pop history book of the Renaissance, so stuff like this is gold to me. Well, kind of, electroplated knick-knacks anyway.)
The writing: Do I expect a pop history book of the Renaissance to be written well? I don’t. This cat isn’t a historian. But, I expect to be kept interested, and this book did. It was too non-descript, without charm or character. There were no rough surfaces. Writing like this is probably held under sanitizer until is imperfection are cleaned off. So at the end (Spoiler?) the writer says “Here are five reasons why I like Piero Della Francesca. 1…” and I’m thinking, where was the adult in the room to say “Eh, maybe that’s not so hot.”
2 quick examps: When we got to the Wolf of Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta, was hardly touched upon. All the writer said was that he led a army at the age of fourteen. Never mind that he was a pederast. (his son no less) That he used his neighbor as a toilet, and he married a bum (well, not all of those, that’s the kind of stuff I do in my telling of SM).
Likewise in Urbino with the Duke Federico Montefeltro. The reason the duke has a hook nose was because one of his friends said, “Since you’re a cyclops already if you remove the bridge of your nose, you’ll be able to see better” The whole profile = antiquity/medallionesque, not as cool. Why wouldn’t you use this?
The first half of the book is fine and the adroit reader will bail after that. Part due is the dash through the centuries and artistic movements and becomes the book it has to be. It’s an overgrab to go for Cézanne & Seurat. Piero Dell Francesca is good enough without needing to be the patron saint of Formalism. We wind by historians and developments of philosophical thoughts like montages in action flicks. If any of these subjects got talked about in a satisfying way, it’d be worth it but they don’t. Instead its History’s Greatest Hits.
Now, is it stupid of me to complain about conventions like this? That books that do this, shouldn’t do this? I guess so. It feels that way.
Finally, Platonism. Plato as a way to the Old Father. If you can light a lamp for Plato now, you can probably later see the Holy Spirit avoid the landing spikes of pigeons. If there’s any way we reconcile the divorce between science and faith, it's via Plato. Old school.
And finally secondly, the more science, (neuroscience here) tries to graph down how the arts are beneficial bla-bla-bla, I shrug my shoulders. Paintings and shit, don’t need little egalitarian tidbits to make them worthwhile. I understand that this generation loves to know how many steps they take in a day, and I’m the outside here, but as to a reason to become interested in the arts, it’s a wonky approach. I think nothing could be more faulty than science (not as erroneous, but the way science could be used to turn everyone into pliant conformists) (Here from the Bernhard I read today “And science imitates philosophy; it takes well-known bits of madness and arranges it in new patterns. We live by surprises that we thoughtfully contrive for ourselves—isn’t that pitiable?”) and the arts should distance itself from it the same way science turned its back on the arts. There, I said it!
I’d recommend the Kenneth Clark book. It’s a good read.
January 4, 2020
This book reminds me a lot of The Swerve which I just recently read. The section on Piero’s life is very interesting. Much of the later part was too but I got bogged down in the discussion of the science of color, vision and the brain. One of the last footnotes refers to The Swerve in the context of my favorite president, Thomas Jefferson. I got this book because of my interest in the Renaissance in general and art in particular.
I was not disappointed.
I was not disappointed.
March 21, 2017
I read this ahead of attending an art history book club meeting. Piero was one of the first early Renaissance painters to incorporate both geometry and perspective in his works. This was a very fascinating and informative.
November 7, 2016
A great discussion on the evolving perception of Piero by art historians over the centuries.
Perhaps there could have been more illustrations. The best part of of the book is the insightful unfolding of the rich art historical perspectives on not just Piero's work, but also of the entire Renaissance in Italy.
Perhaps there could have been more illustrations. The best part of of the book is the insightful unfolding of the rich art historical perspectives on not just Piero's work, but also of the entire Renaissance in Italy.
June 2, 2015
A great book about Piero della Francesca life and art, with several detours into 15th century history, philosophy and even neuroscience.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews