ABSTRACT
The realism of Piero was a rendering of contemporary reality, even in the case of the Flagellation, a painting that depicted a past and distant event. Piero used portraits and contemporary clothing in the Flagellation. But he selected his models and the fashion he used with care. The architecture in the background makes a similar claim. It is local and recent. It consists of the elements of recent architecture in Urbino. Architecture used to be dateless and timeless, but this thinking about the temporality of building changed around the middle of the fifteenth century. The architecture in Piero's painting is emphatically of his time. And Piero's contemporaries were aware of its contemporaneity. This new architecture looked modern because it was designed in contrast to more recent building styles. It was different than Gothic architecture, and that difference registered as a proximity to antique modes of building.
