The wise judges

James Ensor built this little panel in 1891 as an attack on the courts of his own country. Belgium's judges sit in a row, red-nosed and slack-faced, poring over scraps of paper that are covered in graffiti rather than any point of law. Above them, cut off by the top edge, hang the bleeding feet of the crucified Christ, himself the victim of a court's verdict, so the men sworn to do justice squabble directly beneath it. Ensor painted their faces halfway to masks, the grotesque puppet-heads he was turning to more and more in these years in Ostend. He gave the thing a mocking title, calling the drunk and useless bench the wise judges.