Ecce Homo

This is a moment from the Passion that Antwerp painters returned to again and again. Pilate brings the beaten Christ out before the crowd with the words behold the man, leaving the mob, and the viewer, to decide his fate. Jan Cossiers painted it in Antwerp in the years when the city's churches, rebuilt in confidence after decades of religious war, wanted exactly this kind of direct, emotional appeal to the faithful. Cossiers owed much of his career to Rubens, the towering figure of the town, who steered large commissions his way and brought him onto royal projects for the King of Spain. You can feel that debt here in the warm flesh and the heavy shadow. After Rubens died in 1640, Cossiers became one of the leading painters left in Antwerp.