Civic Museum of Sansepolcro

Though most famous for its remarkable Piero della Francesca works, Sansepolcro's museum also has paintings by native baroque masters Santi di Tito and Raffaellino del Colle and a piece by Luca Signorelli. First, though, a staircase off the entrance leads down to a small didactic collection of prehistoric remains (stone tools and bits of ceramics) as well as to a room of churchly vestments and reliquary busts alongside a courtly 13th-century stone frieze of knights and monsters. Room 1 sports a 19th-century terra-cotta bust of Piero della Francesca. Among the 17th-century works in room 2 is a late Mannerist Crucifixion painted by il Passignano or someone in his circle. Stairs lead up to a pair of rooms housing detached 15th-century frescoes by unknown local artists, some with their sinopie (preliminary sketches). Room 3 houses Piero's Madonna della Misericordia (1445-62), reassembled without its frame. The Mary of Mercy spreads her cloak around kneeling donors (the one to the left of her, looking up, is believed by some to be a self-portrait by Piero), while a sleepy-eyed St. John the Baptist and other saints look on. The central panel and Saints John and Sebastian are certainly from Piero's brush, as are the Crucifixion above and the Angel and Virgin Annunciate panels flanking it. The rest were probably worked on by assistants or a miniaturist. Room 4 starts with two detached frescoes by Piero, one San Ludovico da Tolosa (1460, and attributed by some to Piero's student Lorentino), and a famous partial fresco of San Giuliano (1455-58), discovered in the 1950s under the whitewash of Sant'Agostino (later Santa Chiara) Church. At the end of the room is one of Piero's indisputable masterpieces, the Resurrection of Christ. Painted in 1463 for another room in this palace and moved here in 1480, this work made Piero's modern reputation -- art historians began paying attention to it and Piero in general after 1925, when Aldous Huxley dubbed it the "best picture in the world." The fresco-and-tempera work displays a resounding naturalness in its perfect perspective and the almost uncanny modeling of the figures and faces. At the same time it's imbued with an eerie spirituality, or rather supernaturalness, in the deadpan gaze of the risen Christ -- here, truly a god in human form -- and in the soldiers who look less asleep than under a magic spell of suspended animation. Piero lets the power of his art speak through his incomparable technique, leaving the religious symbolism to be relayed simply through the background: As the Savior rises from the dead, the trees and the land come back to life around him from left to right. The second sleeping soldier on the left in the brown armor is thought to be a self-portrait of Piero. This fresco may be one of the few pieces of art that actually did save its city from destruction. In 1944, a British commanding officer had orders to bomb Nazi troops occupying the city. The officer, having read Huxley's words, held off the attack until the Germans withdrew on their own. Room 5 has a 16th-century Umbrian-school Assumption and a processional banner painted in 1505 by Luca Signorelli with the Crucifixion (with a beautiful group of mourning Marys) on one side and a St. Anthony Abbot and San Egidio on the other. Matteo di Giovanni's 1440 cathedral altarpiece is missing the central Baptism of Christ panel by Piero (it's in London's National Gallery), but the St. Peter and St. Paul are worth a study, and (in an innovative touch) a slide projector fills in the missing gap with a blurry reproduction. Room 6 has two paintings by Raffaellino del Colle, a huge 1526 Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin and a detached fresco of St. Leo I (1520-30), as well as a Martyrdom of St. Quentin (1518) by quintessential Mannerist master Pontormo. The last few rooms are filled with Mannerist and baroque canvases, including five by Santi di Tito.