Antonio Acisco Palomino de Castro y Velasco

This harrowing image depicts the moment immediately following Christ’s scourging, prior to his presentation by Pontius Pilate to the Jews gathered outside the judgment hall with the words ‘Behold the Man’ (Ecce Homo), in anticipation that Christ’s extensive physical suffering would pacify their demands to punish him further for his claims to be the Son of God. The brutality of Christ’s depiction is the direct result of Palomino’s profound personal religious conviction (he was ordained in 1725), his erudite literary background that provided him with a clear knowledge of the iconographic sources, and a demand within the Counter Reformation period to avoid embellishment of the narrative but instead to focus on Christ’s suffering and explicit agony.

Palomino’s depiction of Christ’s suffering is uncompromising. The physical deterioration of the body of Christ as a result of his extended process of torture is laid bare before us. Blood streams down hismuscular body, emanating from the crown of thorns and follows the contours of the shoulders and arms, collecting in pools around the elbows, his white loin cloth stained from the streaming blood. The translucency of the blood, which has yet to coagulate, indicates that the moment depicted is immediately following his flagellation. Behind the horrors of the realism of the image lies a deep psychological penetration of the figure of Christ that elicits great pathos from the viewer for the injustice of his suffering. The emotional intensity of the scene is also heightened through the removal of the figure from any narrative to create a purely devotional image. He is shown in both physical and mental isolation, surrounded by darkness, holding his broken reed sceptre, his arms crossed in a belligerent demonstration of his faith and in clear resignation of his fate to die upon the cross.

As pointed out by Natividad Gallindo, only one other treatment of this subject is known by Palomino, a painting which forms part of a series of works illustrating the Passion of Christ, experienced by Madre Josefa del Santísimo Sacramento, of the Order of Saint Brigid. Palomino received the commission in 1722 and the works are today in the Capilla de San José in Azcoitia, in the Basque Country. The present work shares numerous similarities with this other treatment, notably in the figure type and interpretation of the iconography. Likewise the painting can be compared on stylistic grounds to Palomino’s Baptism of Christ in the Parochial Church of Huete, Cuenca, in which he appears with similar features and muscular torso, his arms crossed, wearing an almost identical loin cloth, and bearing the same distinctive type of halo.

Whilst the devotional treatment of the subject of the Ecce Homo provided limited scope for artists in their representation of the theme, it nevertheless seems highly likely that Palomino’s design was inspired by Titian’s celebrated treatment of the subject on slate painted for the Emperor Charles V, which was in the Escorial by 1574 (see Fig. 1). In Palomino's life of Titian entitled ‘The Great Tiziano Vecellio’, that formed part of his celebrated biography of Spanish (and some foreign) artists, he describes the various works by Titian in the Escorial and makes reference to the great Venetian master’s Ecce Homo which is almost certainly identifiable with a painting on slate today in the Prado. Palomino’s first-hand knowledge of Titian’s original would explain the similar pose of Christ adopted here, turned to the right, with his head bowed, set against a dark background.

We are grateful to Natividad Galindo for endorsing the attribution to Palomino following first hand inspection.