Temporalizing Space: The Triumphant Strategies of Piero Della Francesca

The Australian bushman’s space and time are not those of a modern Westerner, nor are the space and time of Piero della Francesca. Both space and time are subject to a host of conditions governing them in a particular culture. There is a sense in which an earlier culture’s intuitions of space and time are irrecoverable. Yet, like the ethnographic investigator, we try to enter into that space and that time. And then, beyond the investigator, we try to attain and appropriate the perception of the native. In attending to Piero della Francesca we putatively assimilate to the version of space and even of time that he presents in each work, especially in his True Cross cycle. This book contains one long, detailed study of significations in Piero della Francesca’s Arezzo cycle on the True Cross and other major paintings. A companion essay on the many uses of space by artists and dramatists includes material on Bernini and Veronese, as well as on Hamlet, the Oresteia, and film.