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Famous Artists of Sansepolcro, Arezzo, Tuscany

The Medici were not the only family to govern Sansepolcro. Due to the position of the town on the very edge of Tuscany, bordering with Umbria and Le Marche, control of Sansepolcro alternated between the Medici, the powerful Dukes of Montefeltro from Urbino, and, very briefly, the Church. However, Sansepolcro has never had its own ruling family and the democratic feeling that held it together during the Renaissance can still be felt today.

The town has an abundance of churches and monasteries (about 18), most dating back from the 13th and 14th centuries. For this reason, the town museum and, indeed, many of the churches are extremely rich in art. The most famous son of Sansepolcro is Piero della Francesca and four of his works can be found in the town museum.

Of these the most famous is the Resurrection. This was painted for the council chamber of the town hall (in the 1400s the museum building was in fact the town hall) and has never been moved. Aldous Huxley described the Resurrection as the "greatest painting in the world," and even if you do not agree it is hard not to be impressed by this fresco. There are two points of particular interest in the picture. The first is that the figure of Christ stand with his left foot on the grave edge and, at the side of the fresco, all the plants and trees in the background are alive and flourishing (representing the rebirth of life), while the other side, where Christ's foot is still in the grave, has a desolate, dead background. The other point of interest is that one of sleeping soldiers is a self-portrait of the artist.

Other renowned artists of the same period came from Sansepolcro - Santi di Tito, Matteo di Giovanni, Raffaellino del Colle - and their works can be found in the museum and various churches. A dramatic Deposition by Rosso Fiorentino, a mannerist artist (called "Rosso Fiorentino" because he had a huge red beard and a lot of red hair and cam from Florence), can be seen in the church of San Lorenzo at the bottom of Via Luca Pacioli. This is well worth seeing even though the colors are rather odd - Christ's body is purple. The picture was in this church for years, getting dirtier and dirtier until it got sent away to be cleaned so no one can remember if these are the real colors or if something went wrong with the cleaning!

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