16/06/2026
In 1925 Aldous Huxley pilgrimed his way to Sansepolcro to see what he memorably deemed the “the best picture in the world”
“Great it is”, he writes, “absolutely great, because the man who painted it was genuinely noble as well as talented. And to me personally the most moving of pictures, because its author possessed almost more than any other painter those qualities of character which I most admire and because his purely aesthetic preoccupations are of a kind which I am by nature best fitted to understand. A natural, spontaneous and unpretentious grandeur - this is the leading quality of all Piero's work. He is majestic without being at all strained, theatrical or hysterical…. Even his technically religious pictures are paeans in praise of human dignity. And he is everywhere intellectual.”
This year, JSS director Yedidya Hershberg executed his annual transcription demo of this ineffable work. A work which the students themselves will encounter this summer on our very own pilgrimage through the “Piero trail”.
Piero, who loomed large for 20th century masters Balthus and Giorgio Morandi, and who was seen as the summit of artistic expression to Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark, will scarcely be found on the lips of instructors in contemporary academies and ateliers. An insight, perhaps, into why these institutions obsess over 19th century doctrines and methodologies rather than the aesthetic/pictorial idiom arrived through cultivation and influence.
Balthus’ youthful transcription of the same work is a case in point. Paying homage on the one hand and betraying himself so completely on the other. Later, his own figures will take on the same majestic grace as the figure of Christ.
The transcription, as noted in previous posts, is not a copy. It is at once homage, cultivation, and interpretation. It is a way of breaking down coloristically and structurally all the essential components of a painting, and how one might, in turn, bring these insights into their own work.
