Ecce Homo

The subject comes from the Gospel account of Pilate showing the beaten Christ to the crowd with the words Ecce Homo, behold the man. Caravaggio treats it with his usual harsh light and no distance, three figures crowded to the front, Christ bound and crowned with thorns, an official draping a red cloth over his shoulders, and Pilate presenting him almost out toward the viewer. There is no gold and no glory, only ordinary faces in a dark room. Around 1607 Caravaggio was a fugitive, having killed a man in Rome the year before and fled south. Versions of this composition survive, and scholars still argue over which canvases are his own hand and which are early copies, a debate that has run for decades.