Perhaps no other painter has put more into his treatment of this subject
than Ciseri does in this painting. As Pilate leans forward to speak to
the crowd in the street below, it is intended that we feel that the
climax of Roman law and Hebrew ritual has come - that modern times have
begun.
How fitting then, that judging from his Ecce
Homo, Ciseri's work was far more modern than one would expect to see
from the brush of an artist born in 1821.
The soldiers took Jesus into the Pretorium,
and stripped him, and scourged him, and plaited a crown of thorns, and
gave him a scarlet robe, and put a reed in his hand. Smiting him again
and again on the head, they offered him mock reverence.
Afterwards Pilate brings Jesus forth to the crowd and says, "Behold the
Man."
Ciseri takes us upon the colonnade with Pilate and Jesus, and gives us a
sense of the mad crowd below — immense, implacable — shouting "Crucify
him! Crucify him!" (John 19 :5- 6.) |
