The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca

The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca (Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca), H. 352, is an orchestral work by Bohuslav Martinů.

It pays homage to the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca, which Bohuslav Martinů had admired at Arezzo in 1954.

He was inspired particularly by The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and by Constantine's Dream.

Martinů composed the work in Nice in 1955, and it was first performed in Salzburg by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik on 26 August 1956.

For the Martinů Festival in Basel/Switzerland 2010 the Swiss author Arthur Spirk presented a video using the CD-Music by the Orchestre National de France conducted by James Conlon in 1991 (see above) and detailed photographs of the frescoes.