by Jon Lackman | 5 December 2006 | Books, Renaissance
Reviewing James R. Banker’s The Culture of San Sepolcro during the Youth of Piero della Francesca and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin’s Piero della Francesca, Frank Dabell writes: “Both these books are welcome; and for this reviewer, at least, there can never be enough material about Piero della Francesca if it helps draw us nearer to understanding a painter whose memorable, orderly art is a balm for the soul, and who still stands like a giant among the creators of the Renaissance … In an area where we still have very little information concerning the formative influences on a painter’s personality (an otiose question for some), Banker’s research … is exemplary, because where we cannot learn about Piero’s character—and may never be able to—he provides as much contextual information as possible about the artist’s family, education, and culture. Indeed one of the merits of this book is to convey factual history that is not only useful for the subject in hand, but which can be applied to other instances of European history during the early Renaissance. Firm documentation, rather than a character sketch (usually anachronistic when it is attempted), is what most art historians want, surrounded as we are by the fictional method prevalent today. A historical novel about Piero recently published in Italy tells us, incredibly, that he was ‘un uomo irrequieto, dal carattere difficile,’ hardly helpful as an approach in an age where students new to art history—many of whom will read Lavin’s affordable and user-friendly book—are liable to announce that something is so ‘because I read it in The Da Vinci Code.’”
