On looking through my collection of digital photos, I came across one I hadn't seen or thought about for a long while. It is of a version of the Resurrection painted on the wall of a small chapel (Cappella di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria) which itself is attached to a small church (the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta [1122]) in a tiny Medieval hill-top town called Borgo Castell'Arquato, in Emilia-Romagna. As far as I'm aware, the painter of this fresco is unknown and the painting itself is quite unremarkable except for one fact, viz. that the image clearly derives from that of the same subject, the Resurrection, painted by Piero della Francesca in about 1459-62 (Banker)1. That date, and the general style of some of the other frescos, tell us that the much smaller version in Castell'Arquato was painted post 1462. And what is interesting about that is that the anonymous artist, while taking quite a lot from the Tuscan master's supreme image, seems to have learnt very little. This circumstance is the reason for this article: to try to explain why one image, picture, representation 'works' and another doesn't.
Below are photographs of the two works in question, the first taken in 2018 after its recent restoration, and the second taken in 2017 during a visit to that magical Castell'Arquato. The first, a stand-alone work by Piero is quite large, 225 x 220 cm, while the second is of the anonymous artist's painting in the Collegiata church; it is relatively small and part of a cycle of narrative pictures in the (small) chapel. In this article, I do not wish to criticise the anonymous painter of this latter image, nor am I attempting to indicate what may be enjoyed and what may not. Like many 'minor' works, it still has a certain charm, especially in the faces of the soldiers, the central one having almost a late-19th century feel about it.
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| Piero della Francesca (c.1412-1492), The Resurrection (c.1459-62?), fresco Museo Civico, Sansepolcro. Photo: the author |
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| Anonymous, The Resurrection (post 1462?), fresco. Photo: the author. Cappella di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria in the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, Castell'Arquato. |
When I first came across the Collegiata fresco, I was immediately struck by its clear indebtedness to Piero della Francesca's famous Resurrection2 and, notwithstanding this, by its seeming naïveté: a naïveté which has led this artist to 'borrow' certain elements of a great master's work and to then render those elements in a more or less amateurish fashion. Let's have a look in detail at what has happened. The principal borrowing is that from the lower half of Piero della Francesca's painting; even a cursory glance at the two photos above will reveal that the figures of the four guards in front of the tomb in the Collegiata fresco are based on those in Piero's picture. But there are notable and telling differences.
Piero's soldiers have mutated from fully-grown armed men - potentially powerful, albeit apparently sleeping - into soft puppets! In Piero's image, these four soldiers fill the lower portion of the fresco and occupy a roughly circular space in front of the tomb but, being as large as they are, they also connect absolutely convincingly that lower portion with the upper part of the image. In the Collegiata picture however, those same soldiers, now quite feminine-looking, especially the central one resting his (her?) head on his hand, seem more like a group of tired, randomly-placed picnickers taking a nap after lunch!
But, of even more significance is the almost inept treatment of the Collegiata figures. To take as an example the figure (in both paintings) of the soldier on the extreme left; in the original picture, that figure is a kind of study in miniature of a typical Renaissance compositional structure, that is, the triangle. Piero's soldier is drawn in such a way as to form a triangle, itself part of the larger triangle formed by the guards at the base, with various indicators, including the back of the soldier in question, leading our eyes upwards towards the figure of Christ, whose head is the apex of the compositional structure.
In the photo above, the triangular 'shape' of the figure of the soldier is obvious, the base being formed by his backside and his feet; the left side of the triangle formed by his back, and the right side being suggested by an imaginary line from his feet to the front of his helmet. Apart from the beautiful abstract composition itself, the pose of this particular soldier has an ambiguous emotional charge: is he merely rubbing his eyes as he perhaps begins to wake-up from sleep, or is he covering his eyes because crying or going through a moral awakening? Whatever the case may be, our soldier is a figure of mass, weight and internal physical structure: he has bones and muscles inside his green cloak, his brown leather armour and his lovely red boots! Although an abstract shape, this figure also has 'space': the depth of the shadows in his cloak as they pass around his body and particularly under his bent legs; the position of his elbow in relation to both his knee and his head; even the choice of colours, the red of the boots stronger and closer to us, the pale pink of his helmet, less forceful and optically further away (or, deeper in space).
If we now turn our attention to the same figure in the Collegiata fresco, the difference is astounding. In fact, for me, the differences in these four soldiers, in the ways they have been handled by the two artists, and in particular by the anonymous one, suggest that possibly that painter had never actually seen the original upon which he has based his figures; might it be possible that what he had seen was perhaps only a drawing or sketch made by some other artist, and that seemingly not very accurate. The Collegiata artist's reworking of Piero's masterpiece is, in terms of formal quality, so far removed from his inspiration as to argue quite strongly for such a possibility.
The soldier in question has in the Collegiata become a kind of soft hermit crab, with its head protruding from its ochre shell! This figure no longer forms a triangle, and because of its almost circular profile, no longer forms the left-hand bottom angle of a larger compositional one either. He is perhaps contemplative - or maybe just bored! What internal physical structure his body may have is barely suggested, particularly in his 'shell'.
While the central guard is clearly modelled more or less directly on the pose in Piero della Francesca's painting, the remaining two seem to have gone very badly awry! As mentioned earlier, the other central 'soldier' has metamorphosed into what could be a young woman, completely different from Piero's figure in the same place and obviously not based on it at all, except for its position. The final soldier however, on the extreme right side, leaning, as said, on a rock (see Note 2), seems to have lost nearly all his physical structure, even apparently somewhat contorting his body, and ending-up distractingly facing away from us, playing little or no part in the 'drama', such as it is in this image. This clumsy movement incidentally contradicts the desired triangular structure, with little or no contribution from this figure, a situation made even worse by the highlighted spear in the hand of the 'feminine' guard in the centre. Both frescos have a spear in the hand of the 'third' soldier; Piero's however, painted in a neutral grey (it appears now), long as it is, takes our eye upward, into the 'sacred' part of the image; the anonymous painter's spear directs our eye to the back right corner of the tomb!3 This point alone indicates a lack of comprehension of pictorial structure, of how different elements in an image contribute to the way it is subsequently 'read' by its viewers.
A further clue that this composition is based on that in Sansepolcro is the position of the head of the central, pink-clothed guard, that is, resting on the edge of the sepulchre; this is exactly the same as in the original. The sepulchre itself on the other hand, has also undergone significant alteration; in Piero's painting, the sepulchre is viewed from slightly below, thereby obscuring our view into it. Our Collegiata painter, while maintaining our direct, frontal viewpoint of the guards, has shown the tomb as though we were looking down into it; this unsuccessful mix of viewpoints helps to make the Christ figure look flat, as he is shown again, as if from directly in front (that is, we are looking neither up nor down at him). Although the painter has attempted some perspective rendering of the scene - note the base of the columns framing the image and the large open sepulchre itself (not altogether successful) - the parts which really don't 'work' in this painting are the figures, that is, the main parts! The risen Christ looks like a paper cut-out, quite flat against the illusion of depth in the tomb he is rising from; and the 'guards' as alluded to earlier, are little more than, no, are no more than collapsed puppets, mere decoration and definitely no threat - as was their purpose - to anyone wishing to steal that (paper cut-out) body!
What does all this tell us? It suggests at least, that the author of the Resurrection in the Collegiata church at Castell'Arquato was, at best, confused about his or her source image. A good portion of the composition is derived from that of Piero della Francesca, even if certain elements of that composition were not the original conception of Piero and were to be seen in numerous works predating the version by him (Christ's stance for instance). Nevertheless, to give this artist his or her due, the drawing of the chest and raised arm of the Christ is original I think, being much thinner and bonier than certainly the Christ in Piero's Resurrection; the area of the shoulder and the raised forearm could have been drawn from a live model but, a decidedly un-Classical one. The wrapping cloth draped around Christ is also quite successful; but the very large billowing (and basically decorative) banner held in his left hand however, hints at illustration rather than at public mural work of, let's say, the late 15th or early 16th century.
This may indicate that the artist was more accustomed to producing small illustrations, such as for manuscripts, rather than the decoration of an entire mural surface; or, that he or she was basically a provincial painter, of modest formal capabilities. Here however, it may be noted that Piero della Francesca was also a provincial artist, but one of an entirely different calibre. His knowledge and love of geometry and perspective helped him produce the solid, active figures which populate all his known works; there is no 'fat' in his paintings, no redundant 'fillers', nothing not thoroughly contemplated and analysed. His paintings 'speak' as if they had always been there, the product almost of a 'prime mover', as Aristotle or Aquinas might have said.
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| A detail of Piero della Francesca's Resurrection showing the 'triangular' soldier on the extreme lower left of the fresco; this photo was taken by the author when the fresco was in the process of being restored, hence the white marks and other areas obviously undergoing restoration. Museo Civico, Sansepolcro. |
If we now turn our attention to the same figure in the Collegiata fresco, the difference is astounding. In fact, for me, the differences in these four soldiers, in the ways they have been handled by the two artists, and in particular by the anonymous one, suggest that possibly that painter had never actually seen the original upon which he has based his figures; might it be possible that what he had seen was perhaps only a drawing or sketch made by some other artist, and that seemingly not very accurate. The Collegiata artist's reworking of Piero's masterpiece is, in terms of formal quality, so far removed from his inspiration as to argue quite strongly for such a possibility.
The soldier in question has in the Collegiata become a kind of soft hermit crab, with its head protruding from its ochre shell! This figure no longer forms a triangle, and because of its almost circular profile, no longer forms the left-hand bottom angle of a larger compositional one either. He is perhaps contemplative - or maybe just bored! What internal physical structure his body may have is barely suggested, particularly in his 'shell'.
While the central guard is clearly modelled more or less directly on the pose in Piero della Francesca's painting, the remaining two seem to have gone very badly awry! As mentioned earlier, the other central 'soldier' has metamorphosed into what could be a young woman, completely different from Piero's figure in the same place and obviously not based on it at all, except for its position. The final soldier however, on the extreme right side, leaning, as said, on a rock (see Note 2), seems to have lost nearly all his physical structure, even apparently somewhat contorting his body, and ending-up distractingly facing away from us, playing little or no part in the 'drama', such as it is in this image. This clumsy movement incidentally contradicts the desired triangular structure, with little or no contribution from this figure, a situation made even worse by the highlighted spear in the hand of the 'feminine' guard in the centre. Both frescos have a spear in the hand of the 'third' soldier; Piero's however, painted in a neutral grey (it appears now), long as it is, takes our eye upward, into the 'sacred' part of the image; the anonymous painter's spear directs our eye to the back right corner of the tomb!3 This point alone indicates a lack of comprehension of pictorial structure, of how different elements in an image contribute to the way it is subsequently 'read' by its viewers.
A further clue that this composition is based on that in Sansepolcro is the position of the head of the central, pink-clothed guard, that is, resting on the edge of the sepulchre; this is exactly the same as in the original. The sepulchre itself on the other hand, has also undergone significant alteration; in Piero's painting, the sepulchre is viewed from slightly below, thereby obscuring our view into it. Our Collegiata painter, while maintaining our direct, frontal viewpoint of the guards, has shown the tomb as though we were looking down into it; this unsuccessful mix of viewpoints helps to make the Christ figure look flat, as he is shown again, as if from directly in front (that is, we are looking neither up nor down at him). Although the painter has attempted some perspective rendering of the scene - note the base of the columns framing the image and the large open sepulchre itself (not altogether successful) - the parts which really don't 'work' in this painting are the figures, that is, the main parts! The risen Christ looks like a paper cut-out, quite flat against the illusion of depth in the tomb he is rising from; and the 'guards' as alluded to earlier, are little more than, no, are no more than collapsed puppets, mere decoration and definitely no threat - as was their purpose - to anyone wishing to steal that (paper cut-out) body!
What does all this tell us? It suggests at least, that the author of the Resurrection in the Collegiata church at Castell'Arquato was, at best, confused about his or her source image. A good portion of the composition is derived from that of Piero della Francesca, even if certain elements of that composition were not the original conception of Piero and were to be seen in numerous works predating the version by him (Christ's stance for instance). Nevertheless, to give this artist his or her due, the drawing of the chest and raised arm of the Christ is original I think, being much thinner and bonier than certainly the Christ in Piero's Resurrection; the area of the shoulder and the raised forearm could have been drawn from a live model but, a decidedly un-Classical one. The wrapping cloth draped around Christ is also quite successful; but the very large billowing (and basically decorative) banner held in his left hand however, hints at illustration rather than at public mural work of, let's say, the late 15th or early 16th century.
This may indicate that the artist was more accustomed to producing small illustrations, such as for manuscripts, rather than the decoration of an entire mural surface; or, that he or she was basically a provincial painter, of modest formal capabilities. Here however, it may be noted that Piero della Francesca was also a provincial artist, but one of an entirely different calibre. His knowledge and love of geometry and perspective helped him produce the solid, active figures which populate all his known works; there is no 'fat' in his paintings, no redundant 'fillers', nothing not thoroughly contemplated and analysed. His paintings 'speak' as if they had always been there, the product almost of a 'prime mover', as Aristotle or Aquinas might have said.
1 Banker, James R., Piero della Francesca, Artist & Man, Oxford University Press, 2014, p108. Banker's date has been used in this article as a possibility, but various historians have suggested others, a point I raise elsewhere.
2 One unequivocal clue as to the source of the anonymous artist's image is the rock, placed near the lower right corner of the tomb, on which the guard on that side is resting his right arm: this rock also exists, uniquely up to this point, in Piero's version and is thought to be a reference to the legend of the founding of his home town, the place where his Resurrection still is, namely, Sansepolcro. Sansepolcro means "Holy Sepulchre" and, according to the legend, the town has its name from the arrival of some pilgrims carrying with them stones from the supposed Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; after receiving a sign from Heaven, they duly founded the town, originally known as Borgo San Sepolcro. In other words, that rock near the tomb in the fresco in the Collegiata at Castell'Arquato has no relationship at all to that place and was copied, willy-nilly, from Piero's original, with apparently no idea of its local (at Sansepolcro) cultural significance! It is noted however, that the Collegiata fresco contains no reference to Piero's landscape background, one of his most original developments.
3 As has been observed elsewhere by me and others, Renaissance paintings often have what might be termed a 'surface' geometry as well as an 'internal' geometry, i.e. they can be analysed on their surface as a combination of flat geometrical figures (composed of circles, squares, triangles, etc.), and, their fictive space, the 'space' created by the artist 'within' the image, can be analysed using perspective drawing (vanishing points, horizon line, etc.). Piero's images have been analysed extensively in these terms (see for instance, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin's Piero della Francesca. The Flagellation or her Piero della Francesca. The Baptism), and, as mentioned above, the Resurrection is principally based on a large triangle, formed by the soldiers at its base, and continuing along actual or implied lines also formed by them, towards Christ's head, the apex of the triangle. However, there is another implied triangle, this time an inverted one, formed by the long spear of the 'third' soldier, which reaches at its point roughly the level of Christ's forehead, and at its base, a position somewhere in the centre of the image but situated in the lower 'frame' area. A line drawn from the point of the spear through Christ's head and extending to about the top of the little hill in the background landscape to Christ's right, if then protracted along an implied line which passes again through the front of the helmet of the 'first' soldier on the left, finishes by meeting the line created by the spear in the lower frame: the apex of an inverted triangle. This subtle underlying structure seems to have been altogether missed, or misunderstood, by the anonymous Collegiata painter.
3 As has been observed elsewhere by me and others, Renaissance paintings often have what might be termed a 'surface' geometry as well as an 'internal' geometry, i.e. they can be analysed on their surface as a combination of flat geometrical figures (composed of circles, squares, triangles, etc.), and, their fictive space, the 'space' created by the artist 'within' the image, can be analysed using perspective drawing (vanishing points, horizon line, etc.). Piero's images have been analysed extensively in these terms (see for instance, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin's Piero della Francesca. The Flagellation or her Piero della Francesca. The Baptism), and, as mentioned above, the Resurrection is principally based on a large triangle, formed by the soldiers at its base, and continuing along actual or implied lines also formed by them, towards Christ's head, the apex of the triangle. However, there is another implied triangle, this time an inverted one, formed by the long spear of the 'third' soldier, which reaches at its point roughly the level of Christ's forehead, and at its base, a position somewhere in the centre of the image but situated in the lower 'frame' area. A line drawn from the point of the spear through Christ's head and extending to about the top of the little hill in the background landscape to Christ's right, if then protracted along an implied line which passes again through the front of the helmet of the 'first' soldier on the left, finishes by meeting the line created by the spear in the lower frame: the apex of an inverted triangle. This subtle underlying structure seems to have been altogether missed, or misunderstood, by the anonymous Collegiata painter.
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