エッケ・ホモ

Around 1490 in the Low Countries, one painter had begun crowding his religious scenes with grotesque, leering faces, and that was Hieronymus Bosch. This panel is by someone working close to him, close enough that it long passed as his own. It shows the moment the Roman governor Pilate leads Christ out before the crowd, beaten and crowned with thorns, and speaks the Latin words that give the picture its name, Ecce Homo, Behold the Man. The interest is all in the contrast. Christ's face is calm and still, while the mob pressing in around him is a gallery of twisted, sneering heads calling for his death. A nearly identical version hangs in Philadelphia, which tells you this was a composition thought worth repeating.