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The Tiber, the river that laps the town of Sansepolcro
and appears as a naturalistic element dividing the two armies in the
Battle between Constantine and Maxentius in the Arezzo frescoes, is
described with particular affection and devotion by the English writer
G. M. Trevelyan: "This reach of the great river, where it first leaves
its mountains cradle, has a peculiar effect on the imagination…the line
of a poplar wood shading the course of the Tiber…a clear stream of the
blue and silver eddies".
The ilex-cloaked hills that form the background to the
scene showing the Queen of Sheba appears to have been a landscape very
dear to Piero, a memory linked to the artist’s childhood between the Val
Cerfone and the Val Padonchia, between which was the birthplace of his
mother, Monterchi, famous for the celebrated fresco of the Madonna
del Parto.
The ploughed fields, the hills seen from the heights
of Anghiari appearing like hillocks of color, shifting with the change
of the seasons, are arranged with graceful harmony and give the observer
a sense of calm and grace. These are the same sensations that we
perceive before the landscape of the Adoration of the Wood in the
Arezzo cycle, or in the background of the Resurrection in
Sansepolcro.
Text courtesy of
APT Arezzo
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Battle between Constantine and Maxentius
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