The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Piero della Francesca · a mural painting in fresco, an upright field within a painted frame of two columns on a painted base · Christ standing frontal at the vertical axis, one foot raised on the rim of the tomb, four soldiers asleep before it, low hills and a dawn sky behind · its date not fixed by the documents, proposals running from the later 1450s to about 1474, read here as a work of the painter’s maturity in the 1460s · in the former Palazzo della Residenza, the town hall of the Conservatori, now the Museo Civico, Sansepolcro · the painting scored as one work as it now stands, after the restoration completed in 2018
Mode
Devotional and civic image of the Resurrection; a fourteenth-century icon rebuilt as a body under one light and one perspective
Mythos
The god who has died rises from the earth at dawn, and the year turns at his body; the guardians of the state asleep at the tomb they were set to keep
Phase
One moment, held still: the rising under way, the foot on the rim, the sky clearing, the guards not yet awake
Presentation
A fresco on the wall of a council hall, within a painted frame of two columns on a painted base; one standing figure above four seated sleepers
Register
Grave, still and cool; pale earths, rose, grey-green and blue in one daylight, and a gaze that does not soften
Scale
One risen figure, four sleepers, a tomb and a landscape of low hills, on a wall
Governing Proposition
On a wall of the hall where a small Tuscan town governed itself, Christ stands at the axis of the field with one foot on the rim of his tomb, a banner in his hand, and looks straight out. Below him four soldiers sleep, seen from beneath; he is seen level with the eye. Bare trees stand at one side of his body and trees in leaf at the other. The wager of the painting is that the event on which the world turns can be shown without movement and without witness: that a body standing still on stone, under one light and one geometry, can carry death and return, the turn of the year and the judgment of a town, and that the viewer, placed among the sleepers, will be the only one awake.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The work is a mural painting in fresco, on a wall of the former Palazzo della Residenza in Sansepolcro, the town hall of the Conservatori, which is now the Museo Civico. It is scored as one work as it now stands, after the restoration completed in 2018; what it has lost and what has been repaired are weighed under The Imperishable alone. Its date is not fixed by the documents. Proposals run from the later 1450s to about 1474, and it is read here as a work of the painter’s maturity, in the 1460s.
The town’s name is the Holy Sepulchre. Borgo San Sepolcro is named for the tomb, the risen Christ is its emblem, and the painting hung in the hall of its government. The subject is therefore the town’s own name made visible, set in the room where the town governed itself. In the cathedral of the same town is the fourteenth-century Resurrection polyptych by Niccolò di Segna, from which this frontal Christ with his foot on the tomb is generally held to derive. The painter took the image the town already had and built it again.
The field stands within a painted frame: two columns on a painted base, so that the scene opens in the wall like a window, or like a sanctuary in the hall. At the centre, on the vertical axis, Christ stands frontal. His left foot is raised on the rim of the sarcophagus; his right hand holds a staff with a white banner bearing a red cross; a pink mantle over his left shoulder leaves the right side and the wound bare. Before the tomb four soldiers sleep in armour and helmets, two at either side of the axis. Behind lie low hills, trees at both sides, bare at one and in leaf at the other, and a pale dawn sky.
Movement II
The painting has two viewpoints. The sarcophagus and the soldiers are seen from below; Christ is seen level with the eye. A viewer standing before the wall is placed low, among the sleepers, and looks up at the tomb front and across at the face. Put Christ under the same low eye and he would become a statue on a plinth; raise the soldiers to his level and the viewer would no longer stand among them. The two viewpoints are the theology, and they are the one apparent breach in a picture otherwise governed by a single law. The breach is the law: the human order is seen from beneath, the divine on the level.
The raised foot does the rest. Set on the rim, the knee bent, it is a stride arrested on the threshold of the tomb, and it shows the rising as something happening now, not depicted after the fact. The tomb is the step and the threshold at once. Above it the body stands without effort and without lift: there are no clouds, no rays, no rising into the air. Four sleepers, two either side, keep a pyramid whose apex is the head, so that the resurrection is a geometry of ascent made without movement.
Almost nothing here yields. Christ is the axis and the whole act; the tomb is the threshold he crosses; the four sleepers are four ways of sleeping, slumped, leaning, turned away and folded, the one condition of the human order seen from four sides; and the landscape reads the event in nature. What gives a little is the fourth soldier at the right, largely hidden and the least distinct, and the painted frame, which places the scene in the hall but carries no argument the picture does not carry already. The Inevitable stands at 8.8 for that small give, and The Living Form at 9.0.
Movement III
The height of the painting is the gaze. The face under the long hair and the beard, the eyes set level and open, meets the viewer from a height that the low view of the tomb has already made felt. The effect is cold and fixed, and every account of the picture records it. This is not the floating, radiant Christ of the international style: he stands on stone, heavy, wakeful and unsmiling, with the weight of a judge and the plainness of a countryman, and he does not console. Around the face the dawn clears, the pink mantle lies against grey stone, and below him the slack heads of the sleepers make the wakefulness above more terrible.
The making carries it. The head is a few broad planes and two open eyes. The body is modelled by light rather than by line, the torso a column of pale flesh, the mantle laid in planes of rose. The tomb seen from below and the soldiers’ foreshortened bodies and helmets are drawn in a perspective exact and unshowy. The colour, pale earths, rose, grey-green and blue, is held in one daylight; each soldier’s armour is given its own colour and material, and the drapery of the sleepers folds like the hills behind them. The same pale light falls on the divine and the drowsing, and nothing in the field slips out of the stillness.
The costs are stated. Some passages are dry and hard, the right-hand soldier and the trees among them, and there are losses and old repairs, so that parts of the surface are read through restoration. The height is carried by one figure: the lower half, the soldiers and the tomb front, is beautiful in its making rather than elevating, and the register is single, grave and still, with no transport of scale. The Made stands at 9.2, The Sublime at 8.8, and The Inner Law at 9.0, a law held over a moderate range, one scene, one moment and one temperature.
Movement IV
The body divides the landscape. At one side of it the trees are bare; at the other they are in leaf. Read across the vertical of the risen figure, the seasons turn at him, and the resurrection is drawn as the oldest pattern of the year, the god who has died rising from the earth at dawn, death and return in the vegetation. The reading is an interpretation, but the bare and the leafing trees are in the picture, placed at either side of the axis. The sleepers are the world that does not see the event, the guardians of the state set to keep the dead dead. The myth is not alluded to; it is the composition’s skeleton, and The Archetypal Deep stands at 9.0.
A tradition, which cannot be verified, holds that one of the sleeping soldiers is the painter himself, asleep at the foot of his own subject. If it were right, the order of art would join the others the picture holds: the sacred at the centre, the natural order in the seasons and the dawn, the state in the guards and in the council hall, the body, death in the tomb, and consciousness as its opposed pair of waking and sleep. What the picture does not hold is labour, the family, history beyond the one event, or any society beyond guards and god. The Encompassed stands lowest of the twelve, at 7.7.
This is where the painting is held from the summit. The type was inherited whole, and close at hand: the frontal Christ, the foot on the rim, the banner and the sleeping guards were Sienese and Tuscan iconography, and the Niccolò di Segna polyptych in the town gave the figure; the departure, though real, was one of means, made on a proven subject for a civic patron. The Swerve stands at 8.3. The reach of the picture in its own century and the next was provincial, and its fame came late and through readers; Pressure on Tradition stands at 8.2. Both fall below the gate of 8.5.
Movement V
For about three centuries the painting was hardly regarded outside Tuscany. It stayed in the building it was painted for, the emblem of its town, and it has never been in a great collection. Its fame outside Sansepolcro is of the last century and is first of all literary: Huxley’s essay “The Best Picture”, of 1925, made it known to readers, and Longhi’s monograph of 1927 and Kenneth Clark’s study of 1951 set it at the centre of the painter’s rediscovery. The painters who learned from Piero in modern times, Seurat through copies of the Arezzo frescoes, Balthus and Guston, learned chiefly from other works. The influence is delayed, credited and heavily discounted.
Its form has come through whole. The figure, the face, the sleepers, the tomb and the landscape all stand, and nothing that carries the meaning is lost, after about 560 years in place. The fabric is charged: there are losses and old repairs, and whether the painting was moved from another wall early in its life is debated. It came through the war of 1944, and a campaign of cleaning and consolidation was completed in 2018. The return to it since its rediscovery has been continuous, to the face, the soldiers, the double viewpoint, the seasons and the civic setting, though a single field of a single idea gives less to argue over than a panel that keeps its key.
That panel is the painter’s own. The Flagellation of Christ, at 8.8 on this desk, is the stranger and more original construction and the better preserved, and leads in necessity, swerve, form, return, reach, permanence, making and inner law; this fresco leads in what it discloses, in height and in myth. Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ stands level with it at 8.7, on almost the same profile. Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, at 8.9, is the founding perspective fresco whose swerve this one inherits, and Rublev’s Trinity, at 8.9, a frontal sacred image under one law, stands a step above. The twelve sum to 104.4, an average of 8.70.
Act III · The Twelve
Subtract, part by part. Christ cannot go: he is the axis and the whole act. The tomb cannot go: it is the threshold he crosses, and the foot raised on its rim shows the rising happening now, not reported after it. The four sleepers are required as four: two either side keep the pyramid whose apex is the head, and their four ways of sleeping, slumped, leaning, turned away, folded, are the human order’s one condition seen from four sides. The landscape is required: bare trees and trees in leaf, divided by the rising body, read the event in nature. What yields, slightly: the fourth soldier at the right, largely hidden and least distinct, and the painted frame, which places the work but argues nothing the picture does not.
Score: 8.8 / 10
What can be stated holds. The event on which the world turns happens without witness, while the guards of the world’s order sleep through it; and what rises is not consolation but a presence that looks at the viewer with the weight of a judge and the plainness of a countryman. This Christ does not float or shine. He stands on stone, heavy, wakeful and unsmiling, and his fixed gaze leaves the viewer, placed by the low viewpoint among the sleepers, as the one waking figure in the field. Renewal is a law of nature as well as a mystery, and the human order meets it asleep. Held below the high band because the disclosure is single and solemn: one truth stated with great force, not many articulated across a society or a mind.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The elevation is of one kind and very high: the gaze. The face under the long hair and the beard, the eyes set level and open, meets the viewer from a height that the low view of the tomb has already made felt, and the effect, cold and fixed, is the one every account of the picture records. Around it: the dawn sky clearing behind the head; the raised leg, a stride arrested on the threshold; the pink of the mantle against grey stone; the slack heads below, which make the wakefulness above more terrible. Frequency limits it. One figure carries the height, and the lower half, the soldiers and the tomb front, is beautiful in its making rather than elevating. One register, grave and still, with no transport of scale.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth built and load-bearing. The structure of the painting is the archetype: the god who has died rises from the earth at dawn, and the seasons turn at his body, bare trees on one side and trees in leaf on the other, so that the Christian resurrection is drawn as the oldest pattern of the year, death and return in the vegetation. The sleepers are the world that does not see it, the guardians of the state set to keep the dead dead. The particulars stay particular: Tuscan hills, armour of the painter’s own time, a heavy body, a tomb of worked stone. And the myth is civic: the town named for the Sepulchre sees its emblem rise in its council hall. Myth here is not alluded to; it is the composition’s skeleton.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The inheritance is close and visible. The frontal standing Christ, the foot on the rim, the banner and the sleeping guards were Sienese and Tuscan iconography, and the figure is generally held to derive from the fourteenth-century Resurrection polyptych by Niccolò di Segna in the cathedral of Sansepolcro itself. The swerve is in how the type is built: an icon turned into a body under one light, measured by perspective, with two viewpoints set against each other and a landscape made to carry the doctrine. The gaze has no precedent. What it cost was little: a civic commission on a proven subject in a provincial town, a departure of means rather than a wager against what its patrons wanted. The figure stands below the gate for that.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and the work stops knowing what it knows. The two viewpoints are the theology: put Christ under the same low eye as the soldiers and he becomes a statue on a plinth; raise the soldiers to his level and the viewer is no longer among the sleepers. The pyramid of four bodies rising to one head makes the resurrection a geometry of ascent without movement. The vertical of the body divides the landscape, and only the division makes the seasons a statement about him. The painted columns open the wall of the council hall onto the event. The stillness is the knowledge: a resurrection that does not soar but stands. Held below the top because the form, however exact, works one idea rather than a room of them.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Return yields. The face changes with the viewer’s distance and mood, from judge to mourner to sleeper just awakened; the question of the soldiers, why four, why one turned away, keeps being asked; the double viewpoint, the division of the seasons and the civic setting have each been the matter of sustained study, from Longhi’s monograph of 1927 and Kenneth Clark’s study of 1951 to the iconographic and technical work of recent decades, the restoration completed in 2018 among it. The evidence is long and continuous, though it is about a century of close attention after three of near neglect outside Tuscany. Held below the top because a single field of a single idea is exhausted sooner than a room of relations, and its meaning is clear.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Field: Italian painting of the fifteenth century and after. Intrinsic force and reach are scored together. The force is high: the fresco showed that the most hieratic of devotional types could be rebuilt whole in the new science of perspective and light without losing its gravity, and that a landscape could carry doctrine; with the Arezzo cycle it is a summit of the still, geometric, light-filled manner that Perugino and Signorelli carried on. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in its own century and the next a provincial picture, its direct heirs few and none named with confidence; its fame late and literary; and the painters who later learned from Piero learned chiefly from other works. Delay is credited and discounted heavily.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. Form: whole and legible. The figure of Christ, the face, the sleepers, the tomb and the landscape all stand, and nothing that carries the meaning is lost. Presence: about 560 years in the building it was painted for, and the emblem of the town throughout; but outside Sansepolcro it was hardly regarded until the nineteenth century, and it has never been in a great collection. Fabric: there are losses and old repairs; whether it was moved from another wall early in its life is debated; it came through the war of 1944, and it was cleaned and consolidated in a campaign completed in 2018. Charged for the fabric and for a long, quiet presence, lifted by a form that stands whole.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Judged as command of fresco and of the picture’s geometry, load-bearing throughout. The perspective of the tomb seen from below, and of the soldiers’ foreshortened bodies and helmets, is exact and unshowy. The body is modelled by light rather than line, the torso a column of pale flesh, the mantle laid in planes of rose. The colour, pale earths, rose, grey-green and blue, is held in one daylight; each soldier’s armour has its own colour and material, and the sleepers’ drapery folds like the hills. The head is the summit of the making: a few broad planes and two open eyes. The costs: some passages are dry and hard, the right-hand soldier and the trees, and parts are read through repair.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the god’s open-eyed face and the slack face of a soldier asleep against the staff; or the bare trees and the trees in leaf. One law governs both pairs: a still light and a measured geometry that lay the same pale daylight on the divine and the drowsing, the winter and the spring, so that the opposition is stated inside one order. The two viewpoints, the one apparent breach, are themselves the law: the human is seen from below and the divine level, and that physics is held without contradiction from edge to edge. Nothing in the field slips register. Held below the top because the range is moderate, one scene, one moment, one temperature, and narrowness is not coherence.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Several orders are held, and integrated by the pyramid and the axis rather than listed. The sacred, at the centre. The natural order, in the turning seasons and the dawn. The state, in the soldiers set to guard the tomb and in the painting’s own place, the council hall of a town named for the Sepulchre. The body, a wounded god and four sleeping men. Death, in the tomb. Consciousness, as its opposed pair, waking and sleep; and art, if a tradition that cannot be verified is right that the painter sleeps among the guards. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve: no labour, no family, no history beyond the one event, no society beyond guards and god. The figure describes the form.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.2, The Imperishable at 9.1, and The Archetypal Deep, The Living Form and The Inner Law at 9.0. A head of a few broad planes and two open eyes, and a body modelled by light; a form whole after about 560 years in the building it was painted for; the year’s death and return built into the composition at the vertical of the risen body; two viewpoints that are the theology; and one still light laid on the god and the sleepers alike.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.7: the sacred, the natural order, the state, the body, death and waking and sleep held in one pyramid, with no labour, no family, no history beyond the one event and no society beyond guards and god. Below the rest, Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, a provincial picture whose fame came late and through readers, and The Swerve at 8.3, an inherited icon rebuilt in new means on a proven subject.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 9.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.1, The Archetypal Deep at 9.0 and The Unconcealment at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.3 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.2, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.7. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The aggregate also falls short: the twelve sum to 104.4, an average of 8.70 that displays 8.7, below the 9.0 the summit requires. The work is held in Tier IV on both counts.
Basis · a reading from long acquaintance with the painting in reproduction, with its literature and with the reporting of its restoration; no visit is claimed. The work scored is the mural painting in fresco in the former Palazzo della Residenza, the town hall of the Conservatori, now the Museo Civico, Sansepolcro, as one work as it now stands after the restoration completed in 2018; its losses and repairs are weighed under The Imperishable only. The Resurrection polyptych by Niccolò di Segna in the cathedral of Sansepolcro, the painter’s Flagellation, the Arezzo cycle, the Baptism and the Misericordia polyptych are context and are not scored. The date is stated as unfixed, with the range of proposals. Whether the painting was moved from another wall early in its life is stated as debated, and the tradition that one sleeping soldier is the painter’s self-portrait as unverifiable. The reading of the trees as the turn of the seasons is stated as an interpretation. Huxley’s essay is named by its title only, and nothing is quoted from it; no inscription is quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the painting’s exact dimensions, whether passages are finished a secco, the order and colour of the painted columns, which side holds the bare trees and which the trees in leaf, where on the surface the losses and repairs lie, which soldier the tradition names and how he is armed, and the story of an artillery officer said to have spared the town in 1944.