Christ and the Adulteress

The Gospel of John tells how the scribes and Pharisees brought Jesus a woman caught in adultery and asked whether she should be stoned under the law of Moses. Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger, and the text never says what he wrote. Mazzolino, working in Ferrara around 1527, makes that writing the centre of the scene. Christ stands at the threshold of a small temple, and at his feet several men crouch over a few lines scrawled on the pavement, while the woman stands among her accusers. Above them a hill town and travellers on the road fill the upper half, a landscape where scholars see the influence of Dosso Dossi, the Este court painter. The panel is only about 29 centimetres tall. Its companion piece, a Tribute Money of matching design, is now at Christ Church in Oxford.