Ecce Homo

Titian was about 70 when he painted this, in the years around 1560, when most of his work went either to Philip II of Spain or into small devotional pictures made for private rooms. The subject is the moment Pilate leads the beaten Christ out to the crowd, and the Latin title is what Pilate says, behold the man. Dublin bought the canvas at a London auction in 1885, and for years it was catalogued as the work of a Spanish painter. A cleaning in 1954 took off later overpaint and uncovered late Titian underneath, thin quick dabs laid over changes he had made as he worked. The reed and the rope at Christ's wrists sit in more than one position, and the paint has thinned enough with age to show both.