Piero's ability in rendering volumes is accompanied by his attention to detail. The daringness of the composition lies in this sudden switch between such distant perspective planes. Yet the relationship between the landscape and the portraits in the foreground is very close, also in meaning: for the portraits, with the imposing hieratic profiles, dominate the painting just as the power of the rulers portrayed dominates over the expanse of their territories. Behind the profile portrait of the two rulers, which is iconographically related to the heraldic tradition of medallion portraits, the artist adds an extraordinary landscape that extends so far that its boundaries are lost in the misty distance. In these two relatively small panels Piero attempts a very difficult compositional construction, that had never been attempted before. The diptich with the portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro can be dated at the beginning of this period. The Montefeltro family in Urbino was Piero's most generous patron towards 1465. The monumental quality of his figures, the perspectival construction of the pictorial space and the spiritual calm of his compositions led, throughout Italy, to the final surmounting of the Gothic style and prepared the way for the artistic achievements of High Renaissance in Italy. There are always large areas of white or near-white in his works, the skies are big, light and sunny. Almost all of Piero's works are religious in nature - primarily altarpieces and church frescoes in which he presents scenes of astonishing beauty, with silent, stately figures fixed in clear, crystalline space. He conceived of the human figure as a volume in space, and the outlines of his subjects have the grace, abstraction, and precision of geometric drawings. To these influences he added an innate sense of order and clarity. Francesca's solid, rounded figures are derived from Masaccio, while from Domenico he absorbed a predilection for delicate colors and scenes bathed in cool, clear daylight. He wrote books on solid geometry and on perspective, and his works reflect these interests. His painting art is characterized by its serene humanism and its use of geometric forms, particularly in relation to perspective. Piero della Francesca, an Italian artist, one of the greatest artists of the Early Renaissance. Diptych Portrait of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1472)
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