London's National Gallery Plans the Largest Piero della Francesca Show Yet, Opening in October 2027

The curators are Laura Llewellyn, the National Gallery's curator of Italian paintings before 1500, and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls of the Rijksmuseum and the University of Amsterdam. The sponsors are Intesa Sanpaolo and philanthropist John J. Studzinski. Ticketing has not been announced.

What will visitors see in the exhibition?

The show is organised around what the gallery describes as interlocking building blocks of Piero's art, among them colour, design, space, perspective, narrative and light. Piero was also a mathematical thinker who wrote De prospectiva pingendi (about 1474), the first treatise on perspective by an artist.

The Baptism of Christ has plenty of admirers. Last year, for a Taschen book on the gallery's collection, three artists chose it as a favourite. David Hockney called it "truly a magnificent picture", Antony Gormley said its stillness suggests another world free from pain and uncertainty, and Alvaro Barrington said it lets the eye rest while still moving easily across it.

What research is feeding into the exhibition?

Preparation has already begun. In July, a team coordinated by David Buti of the Italian National Research Council's Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences ran non-invasive tests on The Flagellation of Christ and The Madonna of Senigallia at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, between 20 and 24 July, Finestre sull'Arte reported in August. The work used imaging and spectroscopy to map pigments and look for preparatory drawings, changes of mind and past restorations, and its results are meant to inform the London catalogue and the paintings' future conservation. That report does not say the two paintings will travel to London.

With the opening still a year away, details such as ticketing are yet to come, and the National Gallery's website is the place to watch for them.