Christus an der Geißelsäule

When Bramante painted this around 1490, he was better known as an architect, and it is the only panel painting we can still attribute to him. He was working in Milan just as Leonardo was there painting the Last Supper and testing how much a face and a body could say on their own. You can feel that experiment here. Bramante strips the scene of its usual crowd, no Pilate, no tormentors, and leaves only Christ tied to an ornate classical pillar before the scourging. The flesh is pressed and reddened where the cords bind it, and a tear stands clear on the cheek. The ambition is sculptural, faces and hands built with the hard precision Bramante brought from Urbino. It was made for the abbey of Chiaravalle outside Milan, where a copy now stands in its place.