Circumstantial Evidence - What History Can Learn from Art
From an article published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag, November 5, 2006*

Piero della Francesca 1453 Galleria Nazionale Urbino











Bernd Roeck is professor of history at Zurich University.
His research focus is on visual arts as testimonials of historical events and on the methodology of extracting historical data from works of art. In a new book:
Mörder, Maler und Mäzene - Piero della Francescas "Geisselung" (Murderers, Painters and Maecenes - "The Flagellation" by Piero della Francesca. A criminal story from the history of art) Eine kunsthistorische Kriminalgeschichte, München 2006, he presents his analysis of the parallel stories told by Piero della Francesca on his famous painting.
Roeck has been able to identify the three persons in the right foreground of the painting. The bare-foot person clad in red (young duke Oddantonio di Montefeltro) as the victim of a brutal murder committed about ten years before the creation of the painting, and the two other persons being the masterminds behind that crime, commissioned by Oddantonio's successor and half-brother, Federico.
There have been numerous interpretations of this painting before, but the painstaking analysis of Roeck offers the most convincing interpretation so far.

A wonderful example of modern iconographical analysis. Are we ready to read the visual evidence that is brought before us from day to day b the media with the same devotion to careful scrutiny for hidden messages?


* P.S. A more detailed description of Bernd Roeck's analysis has been published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung FAZ on October 4, 2006: