Piero della Francesca (c. 1412 – October 12, 1492)

The Madonna Della Misericordia

c. 1460

Piero was a mathematician as well as an artist. It might seem like an odd mixture, but artists were often carried into strange professions; Kandinsky, for example, was an economist and lawyer. And while it might be tempting to fly into Piero's works with an expectation of geometrical and mathematical accents, the works rest much more on the emotional depictions of their characters and symbolism of their themes. More so, Piero somehow transcended that rigidity of position and expression common in the men and women in Early Renaissance paintings through subtle articulations.