Piero della Francesca (ca. 1415-1492), painter, mathematician, and theorist, was one of the most influential Italian artists of the early Renaissance.

Piero della Francesca was the son of Benedetto dei Franceschi, a shoemaker and tanner in Borgo San Sepolcro near Arezzo. Piero was called "della Francesca," according to Giorgio Vasari, because he was raised by his mother, who had been widowed before his birth.

Piero was mentioned in a document of Sept. 7, 1439, as "being with" Domenico Veneziano when Domenico was painting in S. Egidio and S. Maria Nuova, Florence. During the 1440s Piero was in San Sepolcro and Ferrara. In 1451 he executed a frescoed portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini. On April 12, 1459, he was paid for work (lost) done in the Vatican, Rome. He decorated the choir of S. Francesco, Arezzo, between 1452 and 1466. From 1467 until his death he remained in San Sepolcro except for brief...