“Ecce Homo”, c. 1605, Caravaggio, Musei di Strada Nuova, Galleria di Palazzo Bianco, Genoa.
This might be a scene from the Passion according to John which we will read on Good Friday. Having had Jesus scourged, Pliate had his soldiers place a crown of thorns on his head and a purple cloak on his back. The soldiers mocked him, and hit him saying “Hail King of the Jews”. Then Pilate had Jesus brought before the crowd and he said the famous words that haunt the heart of every honest Christian: “Behold the man!” (Jn 19:5) in Latin “Ecce Homo”. In the early 1600’s, when Caravaggio had made his name as an artist, Caravaggio painted scenes from the Passion a number of times. In this work, Christ’s hands are bound suggesting his submission to the ordeal. His eyes are closed as he endures their mocking cry. As in other works, he holds a reed, but does not grip it. He is naked except for a loin cloth so that his pale flesh stands out against the darkness. The man behind Jesus places the purple cloak carefully upon his back taking care that the flesh, now torn from the scourging, is concealed. A dark figure on the right gestures with his hands towards Jesus and looks at us. We presume that this is Pilate. He is there both to fulfil the requirements of the gospel narrative and to connect us with Christ, to draw us in as we approach the Man of Sorrows and the mystery of the Passion. This is Pilate with Jesus before the crowd and just before he says “Behold the man”. Pilate had yielded to political pressure and had sent an innocent man to his death, and it is perhaps this conflict within Pilate, and within us, that Caravaggio wished to convey. The man we see is one of the most ambiguous of all Caravaggio’s cast of characters. The black clothes and cap are those of an admiral in the Genoese navy. There is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo in the Doria Phamphilj Gallery in Rome of a celebrated naval commander from Genoa. His name was Andrea Doria (d.1560). Caravaggio’s admiral has features which are remarkably similar to the man in that portrait. Although fêted as a great hero, it is known that Andrea Doria ruthlessly eliminated those who dared to threaten his position or that of his family. If Caravaggio based his Pilate on the del Piombo portrait, perhaps he intended that this painting would be as much about the naval hero and ourselves as about Christ. But this is just one theory among several others about the origin of Caravaggio’s painting. Whatever the story behind the painting may have been, clearly, it resonates with today’s gospel, which calls for a new integrity in those who would follow the crucified Christ.
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