A Documented Altarpiece by Piero Della Francesca

Abstract

When a panel representing a saint by Piero della Francesca (Fig. 2) emerged from obscurity and passed into the Frick Collection in 1936,1 it was generally recognized to be part of a polyptych of which two other leaves were known, a St. Michael in the National Gallery, London (Fig. 1), and a saint usually called Thomas Aquinas in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum, Milan (Fig. 3).2 For reasons of style, the panels in London and Milan have always been dated late in Piero's career, at the end of the ‘sixties or in the early ‘seventies.3 The only attempt to provide “external” evidence for their date, and also for their place of origin, was made some time ago by Tancred Borenius. In a footnote to a book review published in 1916,4 he remarked that the saint in Milan is not Thomas Aquinas, as was commonly supposed, but the popular Augustinian Nicholas of Tolentino, and that the panel, therefore, was probably part of an altarpiece painted in accordance with a commission given to Piero in 1454 by the church of S. Agostino in Borgo Sansepolcro. Subsequent writers on Piero have completely ignored Borenius' suggestion, but further investigation, with the additional evidence provided by the panel in the Frick Collection, can, I believe, transform it from hypothesis into fact. This study involves a reconstruction of the polyptych as well as a consideration of other late works by Piero and the possibility of their relationship with paintings by Jan van Eyck.