Insight Guides Pocket Tuscany and Umbria by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Tuscany & Umbria
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2018-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

Monterchi and Sansepolcro

If the San Francesco frescoes have given you a taste for Piero della Francesca’s work, you could do no better than to venture northeast to Monterchi and Sansepolcro.

The small village of Monterchi, just 25km (16 miles) from Arezzo on the SS73, is home to his Madonna del Parto, a portrait of the pregnant Madonna, an image rarely seen in Italian art. Originally painted for the local chapel, this solemn yet delicate fresco is now on show at the Museo Madonna del Prato (Wed–Mon 9am–12.30pm, 2–5pm, Apr–Oct until 7pm) in a former primary school on Via Reglia; it is a pilgrimage site for both art-lovers and pregnant women, who come here to pray for an easy birth.

Sansepolcro, another 10km (6 miles) along, was della Francesca’s birthplace. It’s a quiet town whose main attractions are his Madonna della Misericordia and Resurrection, in the Museo Civico (daily 10am–1pm, 2.30–6pm; www.museocivicosansepolcro.it). The Madonna, painted around 1440, is the artist’s earliest known work; one of the kneeling figures around the Virgin may be a self-portrait. The Resurrection of Christ, painted in 1463, is a powerful yet spiritual painting of a muscular Christ emerging from the tomb.

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