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There's a contract for this picture, and it survives. On 25 June 1605 a Roman patron ordered an Ecce Homo, Pilate showing the beaten Christ to the crowd, to be delivered that August, and the story goes that it was set as a quiet contest between three painters. Whether the canvas now in Genoa is the one Caravaggio made for it has been argued over for seventy years. Roberto Longhi gave it to Caravaggio in 1954; other scholars push back, calling the space cramped and the storytelling broken, and a rival version turned up in Madrid a few years ago with the same claim. Look at the picture and the doubt makes sense: Pilate leans out toward us presenting Christ, the executioner drapes the purple robe, and the three heads are packed tight into a shallow band of light.