Ecce Homo

The usual Ecce Homo shows Pilate presenting a beaten Christ to a hostile crowd. Here there is no Pilate and no crowd. Christ sits crowned with thorns, a reed resting against his arm, while a bare-chested man behind him lifts the cloak. Beside him lie the tools of what is to come: a hammer, pincers, a coil of rope and the timber of the cross. That is why the art historian Michele Nicolaci proposed a rarer subject, Christ meditating on his own Passion. The painter's name was lost for a while too. Inventories of 1793 and 1833 gave the picture to the Frenchman Valentin de Boulogne, and the critic Roberto Longhi returned it to Baglione, dating it around 1610. Then an inscription turned up on the grey block beneath the resting hands. It gives his name, the letters E.R.F., short for "Roman knight made it", and the year 1606, the year he was knighted.