Piero della Francesca, The Baptism of Christ, 1450s, tempera on wood, 167 x 116 cm (National Gallery, London)
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Dr. Beth Harris: [0:04] Looking at a very large panel painting by Piero della Francesca of the baptism of Christ. This is a typical subject that we see a lot.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:13] But not a typical treatment. Piero is one of those Renaissance artists that the modern era has loved, in part, because of the emphasis on geometry and a kind of abstraction of space and form.
Dr. Harris: [0:25] He stands out as having a really unique style in the early Renaissance. It’s defined by a stillness of the figures, a kind of quietness.
Dr. Zucker: [0:36] It has all of the characteristics of an ideal moment. This is literally the moment when John allows the water to pour from that bowl onto Christ’s head and would be that moment when the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove appears.
Dr. Harris: [0:51] John is ever so gently and tentatively pouring that water over Christ, because of course Christ asked John to baptize him, and John at first refused, and Christ insisted, because John said, “No, you should baptize me.”
Dr. Zucker: [1:07] The angels on the left look equally concerned, and there is a kind of tentativeness. Look at the focus in John’s eyes.
Dr. Harris: [1:13] The sort of tentativeness that’s expressed in his left hand.
Dr. Zucker: [1:17] Yes, oh, absolutely, and you can see that in the hands of the angels as well.
Dr. Harris: [1:21] There’s a kind of stillness and sense of linearity to the figures. Christ occupies the exact center of the composition, directly under the dove. He stands in a lovely contrapposto with his hands in prayer.
Dr. Zucker: [1:35] There is a really strict geometry. You have the verticality that you already mentioned, but not only the sort of bilateral symmetry of Christ’s body in the center of the canvas, but of John being quite straight; of the angels, very erect the tree, actually all of the trees; and then there’s a series of perfect horizontals.
[1:53] Look at the way that John’s belt continues the movement of the man who’s taking off his shirt to the right, moves across Christ’s waist, and picks up the belt of the middle angel, so you have a kind of perfect horizontal that moves across that’s echoed by the horizontality of the dove, whose line is continued by the clouds, and then there are a series of circles.
[2:14] The painting itself is an arch, but that arch of that circle is picked up and continued by the arc of the top of the cloth that covers Christ’s waist, and then by John’s hand and arm, and even by the sort of the line that’s created as the man pulls his shirt over his head, so that you’ve got really this sort of continued negative arc, or the bottom of the arc of the circle.
Dr. Harris: [2:39] This love of geometry. We know that perspective was something that Piero also was really interested in and wrote a treatise about. This interest in the mathematical foundations of beauty and harmony is something that we really see very broadly in the early Renaissance.
Dr. Zucker: [2:57] I think that there’s an additional peculiarity, which has to do with the placement. Clearly, this is not the Middle East. The hill town that we see just below Christ’s elbow is clearly of Tuscany, and…
Dr. Harris: [3:10] Maybe even where Piero was from, which was Borgo Sansepolcro.
Dr. Zucker: [3:13] That’s right. But we have a reference to the River Jordan in back of Christ, which is in and of itself sort of peculiar. Almost just minimized and abstracted into a little stream that almost seems to stop, as if it’s a little pathway, actually, going back, a kind of reflective pathway.
Dr. Harris: [3:29] There’s an intentionality here, and a formality that is very appealing in the 21st century.
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