Weeks 1-12, 2026

The working over of Art and Mathematics in Krems, the Wachau and Borgo Sansepolcro continues at such a pace that I am unable to maintain the Reloading Humanism blog. Illustrating the progress that has been made, where a year ago I was unable to make either head nor tail of Sylvia Ronchey’s L’Enigma di Piero, I now find that I am informed enough t to be able to work out what she is saying despite the fact that the book is in Italian and my Italian is rudimentary in the extreme. Happily, not only do I agree with everything that she says, but my insights support hers.

In the National Library in Vienna, I am a model for a series of publicity photos and pose in the room where I often consult manuscripts and the library’s older printed books (copyright: Österreichische Nationalbibliothk / Klaus Pichler).

Above and below I am shown looking at a facsimile of Maria of Burgundy’s illuminated prayer book.

In the music collection, we examine a hymn book used by the choir of the Imperial Court Chapel. This dates from the reign of Emperor Friederich III, who in Art and Mathematics is an important background figure as it was at his court that Peuerbach and Bessarion met, with Bessarion commissioning from the renowned Austrian astronomer, an updated commentary on Ptolemy’s Almagest.

Although Peuerbach started work immediately, he died a few months later and the task was taken on by Regiomontanus, who was Peuerbach’s star pupil. Under Bessarion’s patronage, Regiomontanus learnt Greek, translated the Almagest and then went on to write a number of works that were immensely important for the further development of astronomy and mathematics. Friedrich III also initiated the Melk Reform, a process in which the lapsed monastic ideal was revived and monasteries reasserted the importance of learning, with this prompting them to confront and get to grips with the new view of the world that science was bringing into being. It was against this background, that a theological discussion known as The Controversy of the Doctrine of Learned Ignorance unfolded, with the monastery at Melk and the Charterhouse at Aggsbach both playing important roles. Via Cusanus and his realisation that pi is a transcendental number and not a conventional irrational, the new mathematical vision of God was communicated to Piero della Francesca when he and Cusanus were both in Rome in 1458/1459. This I argue, is discernible from Piero’s Flagellation, which Ronchey argues, was commissioned by Bessarion.

Meanwhile as a virtual visitor, in the Vatican Library in Rome, among the hundreds of books that have been made available online, I find a poem written by a visitor at the Court of Urbino in which a painting by Piero della Francesca serves as the departure point for an eulogy on the Duke of Urbino, Frederigo da Montefeltro, and on the God who endowed him with a soul. This is Codex Urb. Lat. 1193, https://digivatlib.it:

A painted Image by Piero della Francesca of Burgo Sansepolcro – An Address to the God of the Same

In the poem, the portrait addresses the viewer, pointing out that even the most famed artists of Antiquity would have longed to produce an image such as Piero has produced:

By a great and awe-inspiring hand I was made:

so renowned that Zeuxis would sore feign it as his own,

in marble Euphranor count it to his oeuvre,

whilst Pyrgoteles would have made a gem or bowl.

Not the work of Praxitiles or Lysippos,

nor Polycrates or Phidias’ skilled hand,

no, it was Piero who gave me flesh, nerves and bones,

whilst you Lord, enriched me with the depths of your soul.

Speaking I strive to defend that planted within

and so as a ruler and patron, praise God’s Glory.

Although now lost, two other images of Frederigo painted by Piero della Francesca have survived, including the double portrait showing him together with his wife, Battista Sforza, which has become iconic of the Renaissance.

Checking over the last chapter of my manuscript, I find that unplanned, but highly appropriate, the work ends with the words „out of itself“ – this being nothing other than the Reloading Humanism motto.

Yet this is not all and over the course of February, work has also proceeded apace on the missing diagrams and images so that, on the 19th March, the long awaited day arrives when I complete the last image. This is a drawing of how in around 1413, Fillipo Brunilleschi staged a demonstration that it was possible, via perspective, for artists to paint images of the world that indistinguishable from the same scene as reflected by a mirror. To this effect, standing at the entrance to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, he painted an image of the Baptistry opposite. Then, where the central vanishing point was, he made hole. Holding a mirror out before him, in which there was likewise a hole, and with the painted image of the Baptistry facing the real Baptistry, he aligned the painting and the mirror so that through the two holes he could see the Baptistry doors. In this way what he had painted was perfectly aligned with the reality that he had depicted. As the presence and absence of the mirror made no difference to what was seen, what was painted was indistinguishable from what had been painted. To heighten the effect and to stop the weather spoiling the illusion, instead of painting the sky, Brunilleschi guilded the painting with silver, so that through the combination of painted image with a twice reflected sky, viewers were unable to tell the difference.