Discovery and Proof of the True Cross

Painted by Piero Della Francesca circa 1460

Fresco, 356 cm × 747cm

Painted in the Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo and can be seen there today ↑

This is one of Piero's most complex and monumental compositions. The artist depicts on the left the discovery of the three crosses in a ploughed field, outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem, while on the right, taking place in a street in the city, is the Recognition of the True Cross.

The scene on the left is portrayed as a scene of work in the fields. At the end of the hills, bathed in a soft afternoon light, Piero has depicted the city of Arezzo, enclosed by its walls, and embellished by its varied coloured buildings, from stone grey to brick red. This sense of colour, which enabled Piero to convey the different textures of materials, with his use of different tonalities intended to distinguish between seasons and times of day, reaches its height in these frescoes in Arezzo, confirming the break away from contemporary Florentine painting.

To the right, below the temple to Minerva, whose façade in marble of various colours is so similar to buildings designed by Alberti, Empress Helena and her retinue stand around the stretcher where a dead youth lies; suddenly, touched by the Holy Wood, he is resurrected. The sloping Cross, the foreshortened bust of the youth with his barely visible profile, the semi-circle created by the Helena's ladies-in-waiting, and even the shadows projecting on the ground - every single element is carefully studied in order to build a depth of space which, never before in the history of painting, had been rendered with such strict three-dimensionality.

Description from the Web Gallery of Art

Previously

• The Resurrection, Piero della Francesca

• The Crucified Christ between the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist, Lorenzo Monaco

• L'eucharistie, Nicolas Poussin

• The Flagellation, Piero della Francesca