Name: Unknown
Date: 2002-06-05
Comments: what is an ideal city? does it ever exist in human history or have we ever got close to it?
Maybe it is a product of the contemporary social conditions.
Francesca's ideal city has no citizen, no mess, no trace of social interaction.
can city space still embody meaning when there is no user?
Maybe Francesca tell us that ideal city never exists and hardly will.
is he posting a question or mocking at our real living cities?
Name: Unknown
Date: 2002-11-11
Comments: Actually, i come to realise that a perfect city is impossible to imagine. That an ideal city is pigment of one's imagination. It is completed by our wants instead of our needs. Is it that "ideal" that the ideal city is completely clean, with a cloudy blue sky, old fashion hotel like buildings. This is the sort of place you would find in the early 16th century in the west. In this picture, i find no imagination what so ever. The IDEAL city should not be what we imagine but what we desire to be great! Otherwise, it is a well drawn and architectural featured piece of work. Very well done.
Name: Unknown
Date: 2002-11-11
Comments: I have read that this was possibly painted by students of Piero and not by piero himself. Does anyone know if that's the case? I also heard that some computer scientist entered all the points in the painting into a CAD program and found that it was possible to move around the buildings in 3-D.
Name: Unknown
Date: 2002-11-11
Comments: Despite a variety of attributions, the true author of "La Cittą Ideale" remains uncertain. The English art historian, Sir Kenneth Clark, argued that it was painted by Piero della Francesca, while the majority opinion continues to favour Duke Federico da Montefeltro's court architect Luciano Laurana (d. 1479) as the artist.
There are also two sister panels on the same theme at the Walter Gallery in Baltimore, USA, and in Berlin.
The art historian Walter Hanak has added support to the " Laurana theory" by drawing attention to the inscriptions in the upper left and right of the panel, which appear to be written in the Slavic language in Cyrillic character. Luciano Laurana, who was born in Dalmatia, is the only candidate likely to have known Cyrillic.
Laurana was occupied during the period when this was painted on the construction of the Ducal Palace in Urbino, and various similarities have been identified between the proportions and space of the noble palaces around the piazza and some of the buildings to be found in Urbino. The round central building was probably designed as a place of worship.
Frederick Hartt, another art historian, has pointed out that some of the architectural ideas set out in the painting are unprecedented, including the rows of pediments which crown several of the palaces.
Name: Chris Iverson
Date: 2002-11-24
Comments: I think the ideal city that Francesca was portraying is a city with only one citizen...its creator, the one looking out on his creation. The creators vision of an ideal city is definatly not what others have in mind for the same idea! I think that is what Francesca is telling us, is that you can design the ideal city but not everyone, and maybee nobody, will be a part of your world.
Name: Stuart
Date: 2002-12-06
Comments: Not an artist, nor an art historian, nor even well educated I find this picture to be of course one person's dream of another time.
But, the city pleases the eye, it has humour and is human scaled! We've lost some of those qualities, I think
Name: Unknown
Date: 2003-07-10
Comments: An Art Historical Note:
This painting was partly done to demonstrate the use of linear perspective in Renaissance Italy. Linear perspective, or one-point perspective, is a method of creating an illusionistic space: it is based on our optical perception that objects diminish in size as they recede in the distance; and that parallel lines appear to converge to a common -- hence 'one-point' -- "vanishing point" on the horizon.
A second reason does have to do with utopian ideals embodied in classical architecture. For this see F. Hartt, Italian Renaissance Art, rev. ed. by D. Wilkins (index: Laurana, Luciano)
Name: Cathy
Date: 2003-11-14
Comments: This picture really touched my heart. It reminds me of the drawings my great great grandmother would draw for my parents. I think I may be related to Piero della Frawncesca. No one can know for sure. My great grandfather says I have his nose. If you have any information on Piero's family tree please contact me!
Name: Walther Schoonenberg
Date: 2004-01-04
Comments: Francesca's ideal city is indeed an ideal city: it has human scale and it has great a public space. There are no persons painted, because it is about the design of a city for humans. In our modern cities we see machines (cars), not humans walking and strolling and making a chat to each other. This means we can learn a lot from the old ideas of the ideal city.
