Securing artwork loans from major international museums can pose significant challenges, especially when a specific piece is needed to complete a display or dedicated exhibition. However, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan recently achieved the remarkable feat of reuniting Piero della Francesca's Augustinian altarpiece.
This polyptych, crafted between 1454 and 1469 by the early Italian Renaissance master for the church of the Augustinians at Borgo San Sepolcro (now Sansepolcro), originally comprised 30 panels, most of which went missing by the end of the 16th century.
As the Frick Collection in New York was closing down for renovation, they agreed to lend four missing panels - St. John the Evangelist, the Crucifixion, St. Monica, and St. Leonard. This agreement helped securing further deals, with the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon lending their St. Augustine, the National Gallery in London contributing St. Michael the Archangel, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington loaning St. Apollonia. With the addition of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum's Saint Nicholas, the Augustinian Polyptych's remaining works (View this photo) can now be admired by visitors (until June 24th), 555 years since they were created.
The exhibition curated by Machtelt Brüggen Israëls (Rijksmuseum and University of Amsterdam) and Nathaniel Silver (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), scholars of international standing, also offers an analysis of the painter’s techniques and materials used, while telling the story of the dismemberment and reconstruction of the polyptych.
If you're a fashion designer do not dismiss this reconstruction as uninteresting as there is a lot to take in between the details and colours of the artworks. Besides, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum offers an itinerary dedicated to Piero della Francesca that could prove inspiring. The museum's team has skillfully juxtaposed objects from their collections with details from Piero della Francesca's paintings, trying to spot links and connections.
Comparisons between weapons and armors abound: visitors will be able to view an engraved, bronzed, and gilded Oriental-style helmet (Nuremberg, c. 1550-70; View this photo) alongside a detail from Piero della Francesca's Crucifixion with an imaginary reconstruction of how the Roman soldiers would have looked like (the soldier seated at the foot of the cross wears a pointed helmet - View this photo).
Two falchions from the 1600s (View this photo) prompt a comparison with Saint Michael's sword in the Augustinian Polyptych: this falchion features a pommel and a blue leather or fabric hand grip that matches the angel’s anatomical cuir bouilli cuirass.
Dyed blue and reinforced with metal elements for shoulder protection, along with leather strips for arm and leg defense, the cuirass in the painting is adorned with pearls and precious stones, lending it an air of refinement more suited to spiritual triumph than earthly combat, unlike the 4th-century anatomical armor (with very functional shoulder and side hinges View this photo) from the Poldi Pezzoli collections to which it is juxtaposed.
The anatomical armor may not offer groundbreaking inspiration for fashion designs (after all, the history of fashion is rife with anatomical bustiers), but the bejeweled section of Saint Michael's armor in the polyptych is particularly inspiring and may be reimagined in rigid materials or recreated using knitwear techniques.
In the lower right corner of St. Michael's portrait, a section of the Virgin's robe with thistle and pomegranate decoration (View this photo) corresponds to 15th-century fabric fragments (View this photo) and to a section taken from a chasuble from 1550-1600 (View this photo) in the Poldi Pezzoli collection.
This brocaded velvet, produced on complex drawlooms, features a vibrant red color obtained through expensive crimson dye. These fabrics were very precious and were used for deluxe clothing and furnishings intended for special occasions.
Fashion-wise St. Augustine is probably the most interesting figure of the altarpiece. He is wearing a sumptuous brocade cope, intricately embroidered with scenes from the Gospels, from the Annunciation to the Crucifixion. The cope is held in place by a gold and enamel morse depicting Christ emerging from the tomb against a deep blue background.
His robe is likened to a silk, gold, and linen hood of a 14th-century cope with The Coronation of the Virgin based on a pen-and-ink drawing by Sandro Botticelli (View this photo), transferred to silk by means of a perforated cartoon that has been pounced with charcoal powder, a technique called spolvero also used by Piero della Francesca in the Augustinian Polyptych.
The morse is instead compared to a gilded copper morse from the 14th century, featuring the Angel and Virgin of the Annunciation against a dark blue background (View this photo). In both cases the morse has the shape of a four-lobed rhomboid surrounded by a band of small spheres.
St. Augustine's accessories include a gold and rock crystal (a colorless variant of quartz) crozier. Because of its ethereal appearance this precious material was also a symbol of purity used in liturgical objects as proved by a cross from the 1500s from the Poldi Pezzoli Museum.
In Piero della Francesca's portrait, though, the crozier is of an improbable length considering the fragility of the rock crystal and the limited size of the stone’s formations found in nature.
St Augustine is also wearing rings of gold set with precious stones over his silk gloves (View this photo; View this photo): they are very similar to the gold, enamel, and rock crystal rings from the 14th and 15th centuries in the museum and they prove Piero della Francesca's attention to detail in portraying the style of goldsmithing of his time.
Talking about details, check also the 15th girdle made of fabric with silver threads embellished with twenty-two gilt silver fittings in the shape of radiating stars, that belonged to an aristocratic lady from Lombardy, that evokes Piero della Francesca's belt of St. Nicholas of Tolentino. The outline of the buckle is almost identical to that of the saint's belt, even though the latter is more humble.
So there's enough to research here in this newly recollected and reassembled works. Not convinced? Looking for something more modern?
Well, there is actually a final Milan-Piero connection: the Piero della Francesca dress (1986) by the late Cinzia Ruggeri (who mainly lived and worked in Milan), featuring a print of one of the angels from the Pala di Brera (the Montefeltro Altarpiece or Brera Altarpiece, 1472-1474; View this photo).
Ruggeri appliqued multi-colored rhinestone gems on the dress to give a three-dimensional effect to the angel's jewels and gems. While this was a trendy trick in the '80s, in this case it was a direct reference to Piero della Francesca's mastery in depicting jewels and gems and in rendering their luminous reflections (the angel also reappears in a frame of a video by Ruggeri - Per un vestire organico - Towards an Organic Way of Dressing, created for an event in 1983 at Venice's Palazzo Fortuny). With such rich inspirations at hand, there's therefore no excuse not to explore Piero della Francesca's creativity and influence.
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