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Secondary sourcePainting1460s

The Resurrection

Piero della Francesca · 1460s

Piero della Francesca's fresco shows Jesus rising triumphantly from his tomb above sleeping soldiers, painted for his hometown's council hall.

The fresco presents Jesus as the risen, triumphant figure central to Christian belief, as imagined by a Renaissance painter.

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Painting of a standing, muscular, bearded man with a halo, holding a white banner with a red cross, stepping out of a stone tomb in a landscape with bare and evergreen trees. Three sleeping soldiers in armor lie or sit below him on the tomb's ledge.
Piero della Francesca, The Resurrection, 1460s. Museo Civico, Sansepolcro.

About this source

What it is

This fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca was made in the 1460s for the communal council hall of Sansepolcro, Tuscany, a town named for its relics of the Holy Sepulchre. It shows Jesus stepping from his tomb while four soldiers sleep below, and remains in the town's civic museum.

Why it matters

Painted for the magistrates who governed Sansepolcro, the fresco mixed religious meaning with civic authority: officials prayed before it before holding council, and its figure of Christ appears on the town's coat of arms. The painting, admired for its calm, statue-like power, became famous for surviving a near-destruction in the Second World War, when a British officer who had read about it halted an artillery bombardment of the town.

Look closer

  • Why might a town government choose an image of Jesus's resurrection to display in its council hall rather than in a church?
  • What differences do you notice between the lively, almost sculptural figure of Christ and the sleeping soldiers below him?
  • How does knowing the painting almost disappeared in wartime change how you think about preserving historical art?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Jesus Christ on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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