FIG. 110. Piero della Francesca. The Resurrection.—_Borgo S. Sepolcro._ ] Of his origins we know next to nothing. He was born about 1410 in the Umbrian town of Borgo San Sepolcro. For several years after 1439 we find him at Florence as a paid assistant of Domenico Veneziano, whose pale tonalities and topographically minute landscape reappear throughout Piero’s work. His austere power is best represented in the bleak Resurrection, Figure 110, which he painted in 1460 for his native city. The stalwart Conqueror of Death has an apparitional impressiveness. He comes with power from beyond the grave. He dominates the world as represented by the sleeping athletes of the guard. A most potent effect is obtained without sacrifice to sentiment. There is a similar detachment in the Baptism of Christ, in the National Gallery, London. Its pearly loveliness of color is in odd contrast to its evasions of anything like warmth or tenderness. It is less an event than a magnificently posed scene. The landscape is a liberating and informal feature, a skilful adaptation of the method of Domenico Veneziano and Pollaiuolo. It is as crisp and calculated as a Japanese print, yet it gives its effect of space and breadth. [Illustration: FIG. 111. Piero della Francesca. Battle of Constantine, detail from fresco.—_S. Francesco, Arezzo._ ] Piero’s great opportunity came about 1465 when he painted in the choir of San Francesco at Arezzo ten stories from the Legend of the Holy Cross. For stark impressiveness it is hard to match them in Italy in this century. Only Masaccio and Leonardo da Vinci will at all bear the comparison. On analysis, the power rests mostly on the seriousness with which Piero takes his technical problem. There is little real grief or pathos in the Last Days of Adam, it is merely impersonally solemn. Even of the admirable fresco which represents Constantine in the uneasy dream in which he saw the vision of the cross, there is no warmth, no unexpected or emotional quality. So it is throughout the series; in the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon, even in the splendid battle-piece, the Victory over Maxentius, Figure 111, the obvious sentiment of the theme is ignored, the figures have a kind of splendid unrelated existence that requires no apology or explanation. It is an effect that recalls the best archaic Greek sculpture. Taken all in all, Piero is a formidable and enigmatic figure, an exception in an eager and emotional age. His truth to his vision is what counts. One feels it in the portrait of the humanist sovereign and captain of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro. It was painted about 1472 and is in the Uffizi, Figure 112. How sternly honest it is, and what a presentation of a powerful and beneficent personality. Even the little decorative picture on the back of the panel, a Triumph of Fame, has an effect beyond its scale and obvious intention. It suggests wide dominions and heavy responsibilities manfully met.