The Flagellation of Christ

Few small panels have provoked more argument. At left, in a luminous classical hall built on Piero's flawless perspective, Christ is scourged at the column as Pilate watches (Matthew 27:26); at right, pushed startlingly forward, three enigmatic men converse, indifferent to the suffering behind them. Who they are, and why they crowd out a Flagellation, has never been settled. Piero, a mathematician as well as a painter, governs everything by measure: the receding coffered ceiling, the inlaid floor, the cool and even light. The barefoot youth at center glows as if lit from another world.