Why do artists revere Piero de la Francesca's work?

Answer 1

della Francesca is so revered because he was one of the first artists to introduce proper mathematical rules for the use of perspective in painting.

della Francesca'a first job was to paint the striped poles used to carry candles in religious processions. Yet such was the upwards mobility of the times, intellectual as well as social, that he made himself a master mathematician and played a bigger role in the spread of Euclid's geometry than anyone else.

He wrote a number of learned treatises, three of which survive, including an exposition of the rules of perspective, De prospectiva pingendi, which demanded more mathematical skills than most painters have ever possessed.

Perspective and geometry figure both prominently and subtly in all Piero's works. He liked to organise large, plain masses of colour in patterns which suggest an underlying geometrical scheme. That gives his paintings the unfinished look which moderns like.

He made a positive virtue of the light palette which the use of old painting methods forced on artists. There are always large areas of white or near-white in his works, the skies are big, light and sunny, and this pleasing radiance, combined with the absence of meticulous clutter, makes his paintings enormously attractive to our eyes. All this was carefully considered and deliberate.