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Piero della Francesca was born in Sansepolcro presumably around 1412/14. Painter and mathematician, he is universally recognized as one of the main exponents of the Renaissance: Luca Pacioli, friend and fellow citizen of the master who shared with him a passion for mathematics, called him "the monarch of painting".
A profound relationship binds Piero to his hometown so much that the artist often feels the need to represent it in his works: we can recognize the bell towers with their characteristic pyramidal spire in the Baptism of Christ, in the Nativity, in S. Girolamo in Venice, to see the unmistakable profile of the Portrait of Battista Sforza or find a glimpse of via Buia in the Recognition of the True Cross in Arezzo.
Between one stay and another at the most important courts of the time, he always loved to return to his birth town, where he had renovated his father's house, and on the rare occasions when he signed a work he did not forget to add the name of the place of origin, as if it were a second family: “de Burgo Sancti Sepulcri” or more simply “de Burgo”. At a mature age his fellow citizens will call him to be part of commissions, to hold public offices, to preside over important institutions such as the Fraternity of San Bartolomeo: Piero will never shirk his duties, demonstrating a deep sense of responsibility and love for his city, where he will cease to live on 12 October 1492.
The works preserved at the Civic Museum of Sansepolcro and many of those now housed in the largest galleries in the world were painted by Piero della Francesca in Sansepolcro. In the Pinacoteca, which was then the Palazzo dei Conservatori, where the powerful of the city gathered, Piero frescoed the Resurrection probably around 1460. In the next building, today Palazzo Pretorio, the San Ludovico, while the San Giuliano comes from the former Church of Santa Chiara and the Polyptych of the Misericordia was made in the former Church of the Misericordia. The deep bond of the artist with Sansepolcro has been reciprocated especially since the Second World War. In fact , the story of Antony Clarke, the English captain who disobeyed orders to save Sansepolcro from the Allies’ bombings against the Germans who had occupied the area, has also recently bounced around the world. In fact , shortly before the bombings , the official, a great lover of art, was reminded of an essay by Aldous Huxley describing the incredible power of the Resurrection defined by the scholar of the last century as "the greatest painting in the world".
Every time Piero della Francesca is named , the locals remember the English officer and remember how Piero's genius saved the city thanks to the soldier who defied the court martial in order to save the most beautiful fresco in the world from destruction. The love that Piero had for his city is therefore today a deeply reciprocated love. The coat of arms and the banner of Sansepolcro, which presides over all official occasions witnesses that love as the show the figure of the Risen Christ in the same pose as the Pierfranciscan fresco.
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