National Gallery to stage major Piero della Francesca show

Running from 2 October 2027 to 30 January 2028, the exhibition will gather around 25 works and manuscripts. Loans include the Urbino Diptych, the portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, the Perugia Altarpiece and the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels, coming from Florence, Perugia and Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The National Gallery will also place three works from its own collection at the centre of the show: The Baptism of Christ, Saint Michael and The Nativity. A digital version of The Legend of the True Cross in the Bacci Chapel at San Francesco in Arezzo will also be included.

A painter who makes structure visible

For artists, Piero matters because his paintings let you see how an image is made as much as what it depicts. The gallery says the exhibition will be organised around seven linked elements: colour, design, space, perspective, narrative and light.

That makes the show especially relevant to painters and draughtsmen interested in construction, stillness and the handling of faces and bodies in space. Piero, who was also a mathematical theorist, wrote De prospectiva pingendi, an early treatise on perspective that addresses the illusion of depth and techniques for painting faces.