Piero della franscesca: a conversion of heart and mind

Franck Mercier

(EHESS, 358 pages, 2021)

Much ink has been spilled regarding Piero della Francesca’s enigmatic and iconic painting, The Flagellation of Christ, one of the most fiercely debated masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Despite long-running disputes over the significance of the picture, The Flagellation remains an unsolved puzzle. The medievalist Franck Mercier takes on the challenge and dives into the pool of contested interpretations by navigating between the disciplines of art history and history. In the footsteps of a rich and varied hermeneutic tradition, Mercier does justice to the fundamental strangeness of the painting while attending to the complex figure of Piero della Francesca as an artist as well as a mathematician/theologian of his times.

Rather than proposing a new biography or extensive monograph, Mercier looks at The Flagellation of Christ in relation to della Francesca’s other paintings, including in The Baptism of Christ, St. Jerome in Penitence, St. Jerome and a Donor, and the Madonna di Senigallia. His study progresses from within the painting, inspecting its forms and colors. Perhaps above all, Mercier meticulously dissects the esoteric geometry conceived by a man deeply rooted in the devotional culture of the late Middle Ages, using the novel tool of perspective as a “science of measurement” capable of helping humans reach divine infinity.

With great inventiveness and passion, this book proposes to renew our understanding of one of the greater Italian Renaissance painters. Piero’s paintings invite the viewer to decipher the hidden codes of geometry, not for intellectual pleasure alone but also as a visual meditation aiming to bring the viewer closer to God.

 Franck Mercier is a professor of medieval history. In addition to his research on Piero della Francesca, his work has focused on the medieval genesis of the witch hunt. and he notably co-published L’Enigme de la Vauderie de Lyon: Enquête sur l’essor de la chasse aux sorcières entre France et Empire (1430–1480) (SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2015).