The Egg Reopened

* I am grateful to the Spears Fund of the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University for enabling me to complete research for this article.

Abstract

A recent article on the altarpiece by Piero della Francesca now in the Brera advances once more the question of the identification and significance of the ovoid object suspended above the Virgin¹. In spite of the fact that it was already recognized as an ostrich egg by Witting in 1898 and recurrently since then, most notably by Millard Meiss,² who devoted an article and some addenda to the study of the ostrich egg alone, there are still dissenting voices.³ The egg is only one element in Piero's painting, but the continuing controversy over its nature threatens to endow it with a disproportionate weight. For this reason alone the present study, offering what I believe to be unequivocal confirmation of the identification as an ostrich egg, is justified. Insufficient attention has been paid to a picture that not only corroborates the identification of the egg but also strikingly parallels Piero's painting in other ways. A fresco in San Francesco in Lodi⁴ shows within an architectural setting an egg suspended above the Virgin and Child who are surrounded by saints presenting a donor, as in Piero's altarpiece (Figs. 2 and 3). When Toesca⁵ first introduced he fresco to art history in 1912 he noted the function of the