MASTERPIECE & MYSTERY: The Enigma of Piero Della Francesca's Flagellation
MASTERPIECE & MYSTERY: The Enigma of Piero Della Francesca's Flagellation
MASTERPIECE & MYSTERY: The Enigma of Piero Della Francesca's Flagellation
Watsonworks
Masterpiece &
Mystery
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Painted by Piero della Francesca, The Flagellation is a masterpiece and a
conundrum, domestically small in size, monumental in its spatial effect.
There was no evidence of its existence before 1744 when it appears in
the inventory of the sacristy of the cathedral of Urbino.
Its frame was lost; indeed so was the painting, in 1979, or rather
stolen, then returned by the thieves once a ransom had been paid.
The painting has suffered damage: the wood surface is split in three
places and has undergone restorations in 1951-2 and 1966-7. It has
even been the subject of attack, the name ‘Maria’ scratched into the
lower left corner. For all that, few works of art are so worth a
pilgrimage as this one.
Getting there
Visitors to Urbino will probably already have seen Piero’s frescoes in
the church of San Francesco in Arezzo,
and they will still be in a state of stunned
awe after inspecting The Cycle of The
True Cross.
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It records record both a profoundly significant event in the history of
Christianity and another, in the foreground, that is more personal; a
situation relating to the times in which the picture was painted.
We are obliged to fall back on the clues we can decipher in the picture,
the main mystery of which is the connection (if there is a connection)
between the event – the flagellation of Christ – taking place to our left
and the three, seemingly unrelated and unidentified, figures to our
right.
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Postural replications
In addition to the unifying element of perspective, we soon note
resemblances between the two sets of figures in terms of posture and
positioning:
The central figure in the scene to the right rests on his right foot, his
left a step forward (contrapposto). This echoes both the Christ figure
and the bronze statue on the column behind Christ.
Also, the figure with his back to us in the Flagellation scene (see the
full picture on page 1) not only stands in the same manner as the
bearded figure wearing the mushroom-shaped goatskin hat in the right
grouping but their hand gestures, with upturned palms, mirror each
other.
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The author is referred to as a ‘plain’ historian rather than an art
historian. The benefit, as Burke sees it, ‘shows the advantage of taking
art history away from the art historians (or to be fairer and more
exact, of sharing it with them)’; meaning that generalists such as
Ginzburg might approach analysis from a broader field of knowledge.
Familiar faces
Ginsburg’s thesis does sound
more plausible, at least in his
identification of the figure on
the far right, in profile; a
figure that he argues also
makes an appearance in Piero’s Madonna of the Misericordia
(Pinacoteca, Sansepolcro) and again in profile standing to the left of
Chosroes in The Victory of Heraclius in The Legend of the True Cross
(S. Francesco, Arezzo).
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Left, The Misericordia; right, The Execution of Chosroes
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scene on the right, is a replication, symbolically related to the
Flagellation scene.
Further clues
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Focus for a moment on the bearded figure in the right grouping. He is
exotically dressed in the tradition of Christianity’s Byzantine empire.
Detail, Exultation
of the True Cross,
Arezzo frescoes
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centuries, suggesting a connection both with the Roman world and the
days of Christ.
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The portraitist
It is useful to remind ourselves at this point what a great portraitist
Piero was. The fact that so many faces in his work are familiar to us
may suggest that what we are seeing are not merely archetypes, but
real people.
Sleeping soldier,
Resurrection (San Sepolcro)
Companions in sorrow
Marian Lavin (10) makes a confident identification of
the two men. She points us towards a bronze bust of
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Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, attributed to Donatello and
wrought between 1445 and 1447.
A clue to the identity of the left figure is the black hair and forked
beard. In Italian barba nera is the name for an astrologer. According
to Lavin, the man in discourse with
Lodovico is Ottaviano Ubaldini,
nephew and prime minister to
Federico Montefeltro.
Lavin next points out that the two men ‘were companions in sorrow’,
for in 1458 Ottaviano’s teenage son and heir, Bernardino, died of the
plague after a visit to Naples. In Ludovico’s case, there was another
death of a young boy, Vangelista, his dead brother’s son and
Ludovico’s favourite of all the children at his court.
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disease from which he suffered for two years: ‘It left him monstrously
crippled and incapacitated, and caused him to lose all his beauty.’
Lavin affirms, ‘The painting shows the two men searching for
consolation’. She refers to the ‘unearthly gaze’ of the blond youth in
the painting:
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‘By the spring of 1470, the prerequisites for a new Italian league had
been fulfilled and the princes had “taken counsel together”.’ All these
aspects suggest, writes Laskowski, ‘that The Flagellation dates from
about or after 1470’.
Lavin writes:
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Which suggests that we can return to The Flagellation and simply get
on with delighting in factors that are no enigma, simply artistic
pleasure: the creation of space, the light, the brilliance of the colour.
If there is mystery
concerning the painting’s
narrative connection
between the figures in The
Flagellation there is also
remarkable clarity.
Lavin writes:
***
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This paper is selected and adapted from the author’s full work,
Piero della Francesca: A Journey Through His Art, available as
a text-disc.
REFERENCES
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Lost frescoes in Ferrara (1449)
Penance of St. Jerome (1450)* State Museum, Berlin
Sigismondo Malatesta and St. Sigismond (1451)* Malatestiano, Rimini;
Portrait of Sigismondo, Louvre, Paris
The Flagellation (1552), National Gallery of the Marches, Urbino; further
work on Polyptych
First frescoes of The Legend of The True Cross in San Francesco, Arezzo
(1452-56); Madonna del Parto (1455), Monterchi
Frescoes in the Vatican, Rome, now lost (1458-59)*
Piero’s mother dies (6 November 1459)
Completion of The Legend of The True Cross (1462-64) and of the St.
Anthony Polyptych, (465-70), National Gallery of Umbria, Perugia
Diptych of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino (1465), Uffizi, Florence
St. Augustine Polyptych (1465-70)
Madonna of Senigallia (1470-72), National Gallery of the Marches, Urbino
The Pala Montefeltro: Madonna and Child, Angels, Saints and Federico
Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1472-74), Brera
Gallery, Milan
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four
Angels (1475-82), Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, USA
The Adoration of the Child (1475), National
Gallery, London
Piero concentrates on his theories, Trattato del
abaco (on arithmetic), Libellus de quinque
corporibus regolaribus (on solid geometry),
dedicated to Guidobaldo, son of Montefeltro, and De
Perspectiva Pingendi (on the theory of perspective
in painting)
Piero dies in Sansepolcro, 12 October 1492.
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***
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