movement polyptych of perugia
The History of the True Cross or The Legend of the True Cross is a sequence of frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo . It is his largest work , and generally considered one of his finest , and an ___MASK3___ masterpiece . The Galleria Nazionale dell ' Umbria is the Italian national paintings collection of Umbria , housed in the Palazzo dei Priori , Perugia , in central Italy . Its collection comprises the greatest representation of the ___MASK37___ of painting , ranging from the 13th to the 19th century , strongest in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries . The collection is presented in 40 galleries in the Palazzo . The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters , Sculptors , and Architects , from Cimabue to Our Times , or " Le Vite de ' più eccellenti pittori , scultori , e architettori da Cimabue insino a ' tempi nostri ", as it was originally known in Italian , is a series of artist biographies written by 16th - century Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari , which is considered " perhaps the most famous , and even today the most - read work of the older literature of art ", " some of the ___MASK69___ ' s most influential writing on art ", and " the first important book on ___MASK31___ ". The title is often abridged to the " Vite " or the " Lives ". ___MASK2___ is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings , individually and collectively , and affirms their ability to improve their lives through the use of reason and ingenuity as opposed to submitting blindly to tradition and authority or sinking into cruelty and brutality . The term was coined in 1808 by the early nineteenth century German educational reformer and theologian Friedrich Niethammer and gradually adopted into English . Niethammer had wished to introduce into German education the humane values of ancient Greece and Rome . Niethhammer was a Lutheran theologian . Since the twentieth century , however , Anglophone humanist movements have usually been aligned with secularism , and today ___MASK2___ typically refers to a non - theistic life stance centred on human agency and looking to science rather than revelation from a supernatural source to understand the world . Piero della Francesca (; c . 1415  12 October 1492 ) was an Italian painter of the ___MASK3___ . As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his " Lives of the Most Excellent Painters , Sculptors , and Architects ", to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer . Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art . His painting was characterized by its serene humanism , its use of geometric forms and perspective . His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes " The History of the True Cross " in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo . Fresco ( plural frescos or frescoes ) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly - laid , or wet lime plaster . Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster , and with the setting of the plaster , the painting becomes an integral part of the wall . The word fresco is derived from the Italian adjective " fresco " meaning " fresh ", and may thus be contrasted with fresco - secco or secco mural painting techniques , which are applied to dried plaster , to supplement painting in fresco . The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian ___MASK18___ . The ___MASK61___ was a period in European history , from the 14th to the 17th century , regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history . It started as a cultural movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe , marking the beginning of the Early Modern Age . The Polyptych of Perugia ( also known as Polyptych of St . Anthony ) is a complex of paintings by the ___MASK69___ master Piero della Francesca , finished around 1470 . It is housed in the Galleria Nazionale dell ' Umbria , Perugia , Italy . The work was executed for the new Franciscan convent of Sant ' Antonio da Padova in Perugia , most likely in the years following his sojourn in Rome . It portrays the Virgin enthroned with the Child in the central part , flanked by several saints : Anthony of Padua and John the Baptist on the left , Francis and Elizabeth of Hungary in the right . In the cusp is the Annunciation . The upper part of the predella shows the saints Clare and Lucy , while in the lower part are miracles stories of the main Franciscan saints . The central part of the polyptych shows a still archaic formula , both in the composition of the frame and in the gold backgrounds : Piero della Francesca was in fact called to complete a work already begun by a local painter . The figures are impressively robust and full - bodied , the realism of iconography innovative and the perspective of the niche throne on which Mary sits is meticulously worked out Of lesser quality are the predella panels , which are in fact attributed to assistants . More innovative and typical of the artist ' s style is the Annunciation , set in a bright cloister , whose illusionist view is considered amongst the greatest perspective renderings of Renaissance art .