Good newsNational Gallery Plans Largest Piero della Francesca Show Ever, Opening in 2027
London’s National Gallery will open the biggest exhibition ever devoted to Piero della Francesca on 2 October 2027, reuniting altarpieces from Florence, Perugia and the United States. The Art Newspaper puts the show at about 25 works.
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Some of the best-known paintings of the Italian Renaissance are about to share one room. The National Gallery in London will hold the largest exhibition ever devoted to Piero della Francesca, running from 2 October 2027 to 30 January 2028 in the Sainsbury Wing. The gallery says it will reunite some of his most celebrated altarpieces for the first time in centuries.
What will be on the walls
The Art Newspaper reported on 29 October that the show will include about 25 pictures and manuscripts. The gallery’s own page does not give a total, so treat that figure as the newspaper’s. The comparison it draws is useful: the previous largest Piero exhibition, at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg in 2018, had 11 works.
The loans are the draw. The Uffizi in Florence is sending the double portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, which the newspaper calls the Urbino Diptych. The Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia is lending the whole altarpiece it holds, painted in 1468, and the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts is lending its Virgin and Child. The National Gallery adds three of its own: The Baptism of Christ, Saint Michael and The Nativity. A digital version of the fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross, which cannot leave Arezzo, will also appear.
| Work | Lender |
|---|---|
| Double portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza | Uffizi, Florence |
| Altarpiece painted in 1468, shown complete | Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia |
| Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels | Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts |
| The Baptism of Christ, Saint Michael, The Nativity | National Gallery, London |
How it is organised
The curators are Laura Llewellyn of the National Gallery and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls of the Rijksmuseum and the University of Amsterdam. The Art Newspaper says they have arranged the show around seven building blocks of Piero’s art, including colour, space, perspective, narrative and light. The gallery says it will explore his mathematical discoveries and his use of landscape.
The pull for visitors is partly the painter’s hold on other artists. The Art Newspaper records that David Hockney called The Baptism of Christ “truly a magnificent picture,” and the sculptor Antony Gormley said its stillness suggests another world free from pain and uncertainty.
Why it counts
Single-artist shows of an early Renaissance painter are hard to assemble because the best pictures are fragile, few and spread across museums and churches. A 25-work show would more than double the Hermitage’s 11, according to The Art Newspaper’s figures. Visitors who cannot get to Arezzo, Perugia and Florence in one trip get a single stop instead. The National Gallery’s page says the show presents his light, perspective and religious stories in a new way, with landscape and mathematics alongside them.
Tickets and timing
The gallery lists admission as free for members, who also get a preview day and priority booking. It has not published ticket prices for other visitors, and asks people to sign up for emails about the announcement. The Art Newspaper names Intesa Sanpaolo and the philanthropist John J. Studzinski as supporters, and the gallery’s page lists further donors.
For now, the practical news is a date to hold. The show is almost a year away, so loans can still change, and neither source says what any of the pictures cost to insure or move. The next fixed point is the opening on 2 October 2027.
