From 14 March to 14 June Palazzo Magnani hosts an exhibition dedicated to the work of Piero della Francesca. The exhibition is organized around the code of De Prospectiva Pingendi preserved in the "Panizzi" Library of Reggio Emilia, one of the most important witnesses of the fundamental perspective work of PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA. The manuscript, the work of a copyist (the same as the Ambr. Lat. C 307 inf and some corrections to the Bordeaux code Cod. 516), bears numerous corrections, marginal notes (about 60) and extensive additions by Piero (two entire pages, ff. 66v and 67r).
It bears witness to the work of continuous revision of the text and houses in its 110 sheets numerous drawings by the artist's hand, which in themselves represent an exceptional fact. In fact, very thin lines that recall the legendary ability of Apelles furrow the pages of the codex to scrupulously illustrate the equally punctual textual description of the methods of perspective drawing.
From De Prospectiva Pingendi, in fact, the great Renaissance perspective experience begins. The exhibition is structured in nine sections:
Section I. The witnesses of De prospectiva pingendi
Section II. The geometric principles
Section III. The rules of perspective drawing
Section IV. The geometric bodies
Section V. The “masters of perspective”
Section VI. Architectural drawing: ichnographia, orthographia, scaenographia
Section VII. The human figure
Section VIII. The deceptions of vision
Section IX. The painter's workshop (didactic section)
It begins with geometric principles and continues with flat figures, geometric bodies, architecture, the human figure, the projection of shadows, anamorphosis. Each theme will have a monitor showing the animation of a double page of the treatise (writing and drawing) and a three-dimensional 'wire' model or with transparent planes which reproduces the object illustrated on the double page.
All the bodies drawn in the treatise will therefore be reconstructed and, placed at the beginning of the various sections, will signal the continued presence of De Prospectiva Pingendi and the aegis of Piero.
Among the many works on display whose loan has already been confirmed:
– Piero della Francesca, De Prospectiva Pingendi, Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana - Luca Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica, Venice 1494, Panizzi Library - Pietro Perugino, S. Bernardino heals a man attacked and wounded with a shovel, Perugia, Gall naz. Dell'Umbria - Ercole de' Roberti, Predella of the Griffoni Altarpiece, Rome, Vatican Museums - Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Study for a Mazzocchio, Florence, GDSU - Baldassarre Peruzzi, Scenographic study for "La Bacchide", Florence, GDSU - Michelangelo , Studies for the Laurentian Library, Florence, Casa Buonarrorti – Donato Bramante, Tragic scene, ca. 1490, burin engraving, Fi, GDSU
The mathematical machines of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia as well as in the room(s) dedicated to them (Section IX) will be able to find a place in an environment outside Palazzo Magnani and there could be organized workshops for children, adolescents and adults. The installations in the city squares and in the Mediopadana Station (by Santiago Calatrava inaugurated on 8 June 2013) – Reggio Emilia's translation of Brunelleschi's perspective tablets, head bent and turned up and anamorphosis of Piero's chalice – will be monumental-scale markers and an emanation of the objects which, in reduced form, will be put on display.
The Palazzo Magnani Foundation of Reggio Emilia, the Panizzi Library of Reggio Emilia, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna and the Superintendence for the Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage of Modena and Reggio Emilia in collaboration with the Diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, the Province of Reggio Emilia, the Municipality of Reggio Emilia promote the exhibition PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA in Palazzo Magnani, from 14 March to 14 June 2015. Drawing between art and science. The exhibition event – of which a scientific project is attached – is structured around the code of De Prospectiva Pingendi, one of the most important witnesses of the fundamental perspective work of Piero della Francesca.
The exhibition, curated by Filippo Camerota Deputy Director of the Galileo Museum in Florence, Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro Professor of Architecture History, Turin Polytechnic, Luigi Grasselli Professor of Mathematics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, will present about a hundred works from important Italian and foreign museums and from private collections: manuscripts, books, engravings, drawings, paintings, sculptures, casts, majolica, medals will accompany the visitor on a journey that broadly follows the chapters of the treatise and crossing the rooms will be like leafing through the pages. Moreover, if all the witnesses of De Prospectiva Pingendi (7 between Latin and vernacular), of the Abaco (2, only one autograph), of the Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus (single codex), of Archimedes (single codex) were granted in loan, for the first time Piero's entire theoretical and graphic corpus would be gathered together in one place, Reggio Emilia. The Scientific Committee includes, in addition to the curators, Piergiorgio Odifreddi (Mathematical Logician) as President, Stefano Casciu (SBASE Superintendent of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Maria G. Bartolini Bussi (Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) , Enrico Maria Davoli (Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna), Roberto Marcuccio (Manuscript Section of the Panizzi Library of Reggio Emilia) and Massimo Mussini (Art Historian).
