Ecce Homo

This is a small canvas, 52 centimetres by 41, and it was made to be looked at close up, one face against a dark ground. Christ is shown after the scourging, crowned with thorns, the moment the crowd is told to look at the man.

It has a companion. The Prado also holds a Mater Dolorosa by Murillo of the same size and the same provenance, and the two were conceived to hang together. Seen that way the pictures explain each other, since the Virgin's grief is grief at what is happening in the other frame. Both lean partly on models by Titian, whose half-length devotional heads were being copied all over Spain in the 17th century.

Murillo painted the pair between 1660 and 1670. By the inventory of 1818 the Ecce Homo was hanging in the queen's oratory at the palace of Aranjuez, a room meant for private prayer.