The Mystery of a Painting: “The Resurrection”

The Tuscan Sansepolcro hides within its walls an incomparable treasure: Piero della Francesca’s painting “The Resurrection”. This painting saved the whole town during World War II.

At the foot of the Apennines, 40 kilometers east of Arezzo in a valley through which the Tiber flows towards Perugia and Rome, lies a beautiful Tuscan town with an unusual name: Sansepolcro – holy tomb.

According to legend, in the 10th century two pilgrims, just returned from the Holy Land, brought the knowledge and veneration of the Holy Sepulcher to the Valtiberina valley, which was still largely uninhabited. According to tradition, Arcano and Egidio built a small chapel, which in turn became the nucleus of a monastery around which a town eventually grew.

Over the centuries, repeatedly at the mercy of various claims to power and military conflicts, the small town has always been largely spared from destruction.

Evil is imminent

However, by the end of World War II, one morning in August 1944, it was decided that this was about to change. The city was about to be bombarded by heavy artillery. British troops had taken up position on the hills on the outskirts of Sansepolcro. The command issued the order to cover the city with heavy artillery fire in order to expel suspected German troops there.

But on the morning of the planned destructive bombardment, only a few shots were fired. Then the heavy artillery falls silent and – remains silent. The artillery did not open fire even when the British high command urged them to do so via radio contact.

Just one day later, Italian partisans reach the British positions and report that the German troops have long since left the city. Miraculously, the inhabitants, the historic city and the incomparable treasure that resides within its walls remain entirely intact.

As bright as the first day

The now world-famous painting “The Resurrection” by Sansepolcro-born artist Piero della Francesca can still be found where he painted it around 1460 – around the age of 40: in the Sala Magna, the former council room of the palazzo dei Conservatori, today’s Museo Civico of the city.

It looks as if the painter has just put down his brush and dismantled the framework. The colors are so fresh, the presence of this fresco is astonishing, which, thanks to the way it is painted, is an inseparable part of the plaster layer of the wall and therefore of the building in which Piero della Francesca painted it on fresh, still damp lime more than 560 years ago.

But it is not only this astonishing presence of colors that downright shocks the viewer. It is first and foremost a look that hits him suddenly and means him personally. A view of the world that applies to every individual and that he can encounter in a very special way through this fresco.

In front of the viewer stands the Son of God in his stone sarcophagus, erect and powerful, bearing the glorious flag of the cross, with his left foot placed victoriously on its edge.

Christ is truly risen

This is the moment of the greatest triumph in world history, over world history itself, over time and over death.

But despite this incomparable, all-changing victory, the deepest stillness and poignant calm reigns. The eyes of Jesus – closed and dead minutes ago – have opened to eternity. The darkness of the grave has been overcome, the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus have changed and saved the world forever.

Now it is up to the people themselves to respond to Jesus’ calm, serious and direct look, to wake up from their night, to recognize, to trust, to believe and to act. But mankind seems sound asleep in the form of the guardians at the foot of the stone coffin.

At the behest of Jerusalem’s high priests, they spent the night before the burial place to prevent the fulfillment of the Bible’s prophecy of the resurrection, and yet—although forbidden under penalty of death—they have slept soundly.

Even now, two of them are unaware of the radical upheaval taking place in their immediate vicinity. However, does the right-hand guard, leaning back, close his eyes because the figure of Jesus overshadows everything? Does the guard on the left put his hands in front of his face out of shock?

In the background, the early morning soft blue spring sky announces the rise of the sun. The hilly landscape is bare and empty, the tall plane trees are not yet in leaf. With Jesus’ resurrection, the true light comes into the world before the rising sun. Their radical transformation, blossoming and greening is imminent. In the stillness of this morning she has already become irreversibly different. Therefore, in this all-important and yet so quiet moment, the urgent, vital question lies hidden as to whether people’s eyes and hearts will open.

“The most beautiful picture in the world”

In the early 1920s, the writer, intellectual and agnostic Aldous Huxley traveled to Italy. In 1925 the travelogues of the later author of Brave New World appear under the title “Along the Road”, in which he describes the fresco in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Sansepolcro in the following words:

“Its clear and yet muted colors shine out of the wall with unclouded freshness. Neither moisture nor dust have obscured it. We don’t need any imagination to appreciate its beauty; it is right before our eyes in all its actual glory – the most beautiful picture in the world.”

Almost 20 years later, on the eve of the ordered bombardment, in the hills of Sansepolcro, the well-read and art-loving commander of the British artillery unit recalls this passage.

26-year-old Anthony Clarke spends an agonizingly sleepless night before, despite nagging doubts and inner scruples, he obeys the orders of the army command in the early morning. After a few shots, however, he intervened and gave the order to stop firing immediately. The cannons fall silent. Sansepolcro, its inhabitants and the incomparable fresco are spared.

Years later, Anthony Clarke is made an honorary citizen of the small Tuscan town. He explains his actions in the summer of 1944 with the words: “The standards of art are more important than those of war.”