Piero Calamandrei
(Afterword by Carlo Ossola)
Encounter with Piero della Francesca
Piero Calamandrei recalls a 1938 excursion to the outskirts of Arezzo, on the borders of Tuscany and Umbria, where he first sawPiero della Francesca's now-famous fresco of the Virgin Waiting for the Child.
In impeccable prose, this is an opportunity for a sensitive meditation on the passage of time, the destruction and misfortunes of war, the irreplaceability of works of art, the evidence of beauty, the singularity of artistic emotion and the strength of the Italian people's attachment to their heritage...
" In Italy, and particularly in Tuscany, every village, every bend in the road, every hill has a face, like a living person ; there is no hillside or bell tower that is not associated in our hearts with the name of a poet or painter, with the memory of a historical event as important to us as the joys and sorrows of our family. It's not about literature, it's about life. [...] Between Arezzo and Sansepolcro, there's a little village called Monterchi, near which, in a cemetery in the middle of the countryside, reigns in solitude Piero della Francesca's most beautiful painting, the Madonna del Parto, which celebrates in the most solemn and austere way the glory of motherhood : not a day has gone by without my thinking of this painting handed over to the Germans, just as I thought of my relatives and friends in danger. What will have happened to it ? Could it have been saved ? "
Piero Calamandrei, 15 sept. 1944
Calamandrei P., Rencontre avec Piero della Francesca, unpublished in French, translated from the Italian, illustrated and annotated by Angela Guidi and Lucie Marignac, Paris, Éditions Rue d'Ulm, 2023, 96 p.
ISBN :978-2-7288-0840-3
Price : 15 €
Publication : 20 october 2023
