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The Enigma of Piero: Piero Della Francesca

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An immense pleasure! Carlo Ginsburg reminds us more than once that he is not an art historian, but an historian. As such, his approach to paintings such as Piero della Francesca's "Flagellation" which to our eyes are difficult if not unfathomable iconographically, is not bound to the orthodoxies of specialist methodology. If this sounds heady and dense, it is. This is not a book for the casual admirer of Renaissance painting because much of the suspense(and it is suspenseful) is reading the author's discrediting of other interpretations(these are often amusing), suggesting the roadmap he will take to circumvent the errors of the previous historians, then elegantly exhuming the necessary evidence and reasoning to produce-voila- a fresh, impressively founded exegisis before our very eyes. One marvels at the depth and breadth of cultural knowledge that is this historian's primary resource, and facility with archives. But there is another dimension to this book. As one reads, one understands that this is the work of contemporary humanist, and the source of his insights is perhaps this empathy, if not kinship with his subject, whether patron or artist.