Why Is This the Greatest Living Poet’s Favorite Painting?

Poets quite often make the best art critics. The same aesthetic antennae attuned to language and meaning come into play when diving into the meaning of visual art. So, when Irish poet Seamus Heaney, 1995 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (among a slew of other prizes), talked to More Intelligent Life magazine about his personal “seven wonders of the world,” it was interesting that he picked as his favorite work of art Piero della Francesca’s The Flagellation of Christ (shown above). Called by many the greatest poet alive today and the most important poet of the last half century, Heaney knows that his pronouncements carry a lot of weight. So, why is this the greatest living poet’s favorite painting? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Is This the Greatest Living Poet’s FavoritePainting?"

[Image: Piero della Francesca. The Flagellation of Christ, circa 1455–1460. Image source.]

[Many thanks to friend Dave, the second greatest living poet, for passing on this story to me.]