Select the image to zoomEcce Homo
1560-70
Luis de Morales (ca. 1510-after 1585)
Oil on panel
75 x 57 cm
Spanish religious works from the second third of the sixteenth century frequently anticipate, in sometimes remarkably precocious ways, the artistic concerns of the Catholic Reformation. Morales, like his Valencian contemporary, Juan de Juanes, developed versions of traditional images that effectively summed up what the Council of Trent (1545-63) was seeking, an art that would instruct the laity and inspire devotion. In the present example, which has both Flemish and Italian antecedents, Morales has brought the viewer into close proximity with the scourged and despised Man of Sorrows (Christ after the Flagellation), even as Pontius Pilate, dressed as a Renaissance grandee, asks us to "Behold the Man" (ecce homo).
Text and images © Hispanic Society of America.