A notarial record documents Piero di Benedetto de’ Franceschi (Piero della Francesca) as born in Borgo Sansepolcro (Tuscany), anchoring the geographic focus of his earliest patronage networks there.
Art-historical records commonly date the Madonna della Misericordia polyptych’s creation across the mid-15th century, reflecting its unusually extended execution period after the 1445 contract.
The Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Borgo Sansepolcro formally commissioned Piero to paint a large polyptych (later known as the Polyptych of the Misericordia), an early cornerstone of his Tuscan commissions.
The Baptism of Christ is generally associated with an early Sansepolcro commission connected to the Camaldolese community; it is typically dated to the late 1440s–early 1450s (though scholarly dating remains debated).
In Rimini, Piero executed the fresco of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta praying before St. Sigismund in the Tempio Malatestiano—an important early courtly commission outside Tuscany that helped expand his patronage profile in central Italy.
Piero is traditionally credited with a profile portrait of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (now in the Louvre), closely tied to the Rimini context and the visual language of medals and court representation.
After Bicci di Lorenzo’s death, Piero was called to continue the Bacci Chapel decoration at San Francesco in Arezzo, beginning the long fresco cycle later known as the Legend of the True Cross—a pivotal Tuscan commission of his career.
The Legend of the True Cross frescoes progressed in stages across the 1450s and 1460s, with documentation indicating pauses and resumptions before completion later in the decade—one of the defining undertakings of his Tuscan period.
Piero signed a contract to produce a multi-panel altarpiece for Sant’Agostino in Borgo Sansepolcro (the Polyptych of Saint Augustine), another major local commission later dismembered and dispersed.
Piero’s Madonna del Parto (Monterchi) is generally dated broadly within the period overlapping the Arezzo enterprise, with common scholarly ranges spanning the later 1450s into the 1460s.
The Flagellation of Christ (now in Urbino’s Galleria Nazionale delle Marche) is typically dated to around 1459–1460, reflecting Piero’s growing engagement with Urbino and its intellectual-court milieu.
While residing in Sansepolcro, Piero received and executed the commission for The Resurrection for the Palazzo dei Conservatori (later in the Museo Civico), a civic-religious image central to the town’s identity and governance.
Piero completed the Bacci Chapel frescoes in Arezzo in the mid-1460s, concluding a long-running Tuscan commission that became a landmark of Early Renaissance narrative painting and perspective construction.
Piero della Francesca's Early Commissions in Tuscany and Urbino (c. 1430–1465)
