Christ presented to the People (Ecce Homo)

By the 1520s engravings by the German artist Albrecht Dürer were circulating widely in northern Italy, and Correggio probably took one idea for this picture from them. The Gospels describe Pilate showing the beaten Christ to the crowd with the words Ecce Homo, behold the man. They say nothing about his mother being there. Correggio puts her in the foreground, fainting into the arms of Saint John, and as she falls her fingers scrape along the edge of the stone parapet. Pilate, in a turban, gestures toward his prisoner. Christ stands with bound hands under the crown of thorns, turned toward us, so that we stand where the crowd stood when it called for his death. The helmeted soldier at his shoulder looks at him with something like respect. He may be Longinus, the soldier who in legend was converted at the cross.