It’s always been a bit of a tradition of this site to explore the Holy Week and in particular the days of the Easter Triduum (today it is Good Friday and Catholics ponder about the passion and death of Jesus), via paintings and religious images that often inspired us fashion, textiles and costume connections, or colour palette studies.
So, following this tradition, let's look at the painting "Ecce Homo" (Behold the Man, 1871) by Antonio Ciseri (the first image in this post is a sketch of the painting).
In the painting Christ stands beaten, his back exposed indicating the recent flagellation. He has just been mocked by Roman soldiers who clothed him with a robe of "purple" (Mark 15:17) or "scarlet" (Matthew 27:28), a royal colour, and put a crown of thorns on his head. He is standing next to Pontius Pilate, the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea. The scene seems to be frozen in time: here Pilate hasn't washed his hands of Jesus' blood yet, but he is presenting Jesus to the crowd from his praesidium.
According to the Gospels, though reluctant to execute Jesus, Pilate, pushed by the crowd, ordered his crucifixion. Ciseri's painting is entitled "Ecce Homo," that is, "Behold, the man," the words pronounced by Pilate when he presented Jesus to the crowd.
Around Pilate and Jesus there are soldiers and women, with their backs turned or with their hands on their hips, almost waiting for something to happen. One woman, Pilate's wife, is turned towards the viewer, and gives her back to Pilate and the crowd, her face in anguish and distress. Her emotional pain is visible as Pilate's wife had had a dream about Jesus and had adviced her husband not to have anything to do with him.
The most interesting figure in the painting is Pilate himself: in a theatrical gesture he leans over the railing, extending his hand towards Jesus. We can almost hear him presenting him to the crowd. Pilate is a central figure that commands attention with his gesture, but also with his tunic that adds drama to the painting (Ciseri did a study of this figure in the draped garment – second image in this post).
The Roman governor seems to fill the scene, his draped ivory robe with a scalloped edge (a detail that hints at the quality of the garment and therefore at Pilate's position), is wrapped around him and fluidly flows on his back in a dramatic way, the sleeves open up as his left arm extends towards Jesus who instead stands silent next to him with his arms tied behind his back.
Ciseri had an almost cinematic style: the painter chose to portray the scene from the back, so we don't see Pilate and Jesus' faces from the front. The perspective of the painting is fascinating as the viewers have the same perspective of a Roman servant standing behind Pilate, looking out into the crowd, an expedient to make us take in the scene as a whole, pushing us to ponder about our own attitude towards religion and asking us if we are more like Pilate who doesn't want to condemn Jesus, but doesn't help him either, or if we are as angry as the crowd or as helpless and lost as Pilate's wife.
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