‘One of the most charismatic artists ever’: Piero della Francesca, adored by everyone from Hockney to Heaney

He transfixed Pasolini and painted Seamus Heaney’s favourite artwork – and now David Hockney is paying tribute to this very modern Renaissance master in a joint show

It’s raining inside the Uffizi. The downpour outside, cascading from the Florence skies, is getting in through the ceiling and staff are rushing around with buckets. At the centre of this watery quadrangle are two painted wooden panels mounted in a single gilt frame. It stands in the middle of the room, so you can see the triumphal chariots on the reverse as well as the portraits on the front. The leaks are creating a drumroll, adding to the drama, almost as if nature itself were telling us to pay attention to this masterpiece. Yet even without all that, these are the most arresting faces in the room. Why? This double portrait – of Battista Sforza and her husband Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino – is by Piero della Francesca, one of the most charismatic artists of all time.

Piero’s art is fleshy and personal, ethereal and cosmic. He paints azure skies and floating eggs, fancy hats and wide eyes, with wit and spontaneity, yet underpinned by geometric order. His people are as mysterious as they are ordinary. Battista looks pale and distant, for she was already dead when her portrait was finished in the 1470s. The gold frame separating her from Federico is the barrier between life and death. Across this gulf, the two contemplate each other. If her face is ghostly, his is fearsomely alive: a gnarled walnut painted in profile, not just to emulate emperors on Roman coins but to hide the socket of his right eye, lost in a joust. His disfigured nose is not concealed. Federico made his money as a mercenary, putting his profits into a graceful palace in Urbino where he employed Piero as court artist.

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