The scene takes place in the courtyard of a noble Lombard building with its columns, friezes and stone balustrades adorning the loggia on the first floor. The floor is composed of a precious play of polychrome marble inlays. Everything is as perfect as if we were in a courtyard in the Quadrilatero della Moda or on the set of an AD photo shoot.
In this muffled atmosphere that gives serenity and calls to mind wealth and well-being, linked to the central column of the portico, we see Jesus Christ. Let us go beyond the religious aspect and analyse the scene.
The sheer wickedness, the foul perfidy. Christ's torturers evoke the bloodiest scenes of a Tarantino film. Virgins, scourges and whips are used on the poor body, but that's not all: the man in the red trousers, in order to hit him with more force, points his foot against the thigh of the condemned man and pulls his hair with
vehemence, the one in the blue turban then yanks the rope that binds the unfortunate man as if to disarticulate his arms, break his wrists. Everything happens in this suspended and extremely glamorous atmosphere, as elegant are the clothes of the inhuman torturers who seem to dance around the flagellation column.
Standing aside, Pontius Pilate, who inflicted the punishment and from the pose would appear to regret the sentence passed, attends the scene.
One detail surprises us in the marble floor; in axis with the Christ we notice a cross. Returning to the tortured man: he is a pained mask, but on his body there are no traces of the blows suffered; normally we are used to narratives of filthy, hidden basements where political opponents are tortured in dictatorial regimes. Here, however, the violence perpetrated does not allow for distractions, it is the chaotic element in the perfect geometry of the scenario.
- The work: Bernardo Zenale. Flagellation. Sforzesco Castle Milan
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