Ecce homo

File:Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) - Ecce Homo - Google Art Project.jpg

Ecce Homo, Caravaggio, 1605

Template:Italic title Ecce homo (Template:IPAc-en, , ; "behold the man") are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John, when he presents a scourged Jesus, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his crucifixion (John 19:5). The original Template:Langx, is rendered by most English Bible translations, e.g. the Douay-Rheims Bible and the King James Version, as "behold the man".Template:Efn The scene has been widely depicted in Christian art.

File:Follower of Jheronimus Bosch 029.jpg

Version by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, 1490s

A scene of the ecce homo is a standard component of cycles illustrating the Passion and life of Christ in art. It follows the stories of the Flagellation of Christ, the crowning with thorns and the mocking of Jesus, the last two often being combined:Template:Efn The usual depiction shows Pilate and Jesus, a mocking crowd which may be rather large, and parts of the city of Jerusalem.

But, from the 15th century in the West, and much earlier in the art of the Eastern church, devotional pictures began to portray Jesus alone, in half or full figure with a purple robe, loincloth, crown of thorns and torture wounds, especially on his head, and later became referred to as images of the Ecce homo. Similar subjects but with the wounds of the crucifixion visible (Nail wounds on the limbs, spear wounds on the sides), are termed a Man of Sorrows (also Misericordia). If the instruments of the Passion are present, it may be called an Arma Christi. If Christ is sitting down (usually supporting himself with his hand on his thigh), it may be referred to it as Christ at rest or Pensive Christ. It is not always possible to distinguish these subjects.

Eastern Christianity

Narrative scenes of the biblical moment are almost never shown in Eastern art, but icons of the single figure of the tortured Christ go back over a millennium, and have sometimes been called Ecce homo images by later sources. The first depictions of the ecce homo scene in the arts appear in the 9th and 10th centuries in the Syrian-Byzantine culture of the Antiochian Greek Christians.Template:Efn

Eastern Orthodox tradition generally refers to this type of icon by a different title:Template:Efn ″Jesus Christ the Bridegroom″ (Template:Langx).Template:Efn It derives from the words in Template:Langx, by which Jesus Christ reveals himself, in his Parable of the Ten Virgins according to the Gospel of Matthew,Template:Efn as the bearer of the most high joy.Template:Efn

File:Ecce-homo Mantegna.jpg

Ecce Homo, Andrea Mantegna, 1500

The icon presents the bridegroom as a suffering Christ, mocked and humiliated by Pontius Pilate's soldiers before his crucifixion.Template:EfnTemplate:Efn

The daily Midnight Office summons the faithful to be ready at all times for the day of the Dread Judgement, which will come unexpectedly like "a bridegroom in the night".Template:Efn On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the first three days of Passion Week, the last week before Pascha, consecrated to the commemoration of the last days of the earthly life of the Saviour, the troparion is chanted: "Behold the Bridegroom Cometh at Midnight" (Template:Langx).Template:EfnTemplate:Efn

A Passion Play, presented in Moscow (27 March 2007) and in Rome (29 March 2007), recalls the words, with which "in Holy Scriptures Christ describes Himself as a bridegroom":Template:Efn Template:Poemquote

Western Christianity

File:Titian - Christ Shown to the People (Ecce Homo).jpg

Ecce Homo by Titian, between c. 1570 and c. 1576

Depictions of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages, e.g. the Egbert Codex and the Codex Aureus Epternacensis, seem to depict the ecce homo scene (and are usually interpreted as such), but more often than not only show the Crowning of thorns and the Mocking of Christ,Template:Efn which precede the actual ecce homo scene in the Bible. The independent image only developed around 1400, probably in Burgundy, but then rapidly became extremely popular, especially in Northern Europe.Template:Sfn

File:Ditiek Albrecht Bouts.jpg

Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa Diptych, c. 1491–1520. Aelbrecht Bouts

The motif found increasing currency as the Passion became a central theme in Western piety in the 15th and 16th centuries. The ecce homo theme was included not only in the passion plays of medieval theatre, but also in cycles of illustrations of the story of the Passion, as in the Great Passion of Albrecht Dürer or the engravings of Martin Schongauer. The scene was (especially in France) often depicted as a sculpture or group of sculptures; even altarpieces and other paintings with the motif were produced (e.g. by Hieronymus Bosch or Hans Holbein). Like the passion plays, the visual depictions of the ecce homo scene, it has been argued, often, and increasingly, portray the people of Jerusalem in a highly critical light, bordering perhaps on antisemitic caricatures. Equally, this style of art has been read as a kind of simplistic externalisation of the inner hatred of the angry crowd towards Jesus, not necessarily implying any racial judgment.

The motif of the lone figure of a suffering Christ who seems to be staring directly at the observer, enabling him/her to personally identify with the events of the Passion, arose in the late Middle Ages. At the same time similar motifs of the Man of Sorrow and Christ at rest increased in importance. The subject was used repeatedly in later so-called old master prints (e.g. by Jacques Callot and Rembrandt), in the paintings of the Renaissance and the Baroque, as well as in Baroque sculptures.

Hieronymus Bosch painted his first Ecce Homo during the 1470s. He returned to the subject in 1490 to paint in a characteristically Netherlandish style, with deep perspective and a surreal ghostly image of praying monks in the lower left-hand corner.

In 1498, Albrecht Dürer depicted the suffering of Christ in the ecce homo of his Great Passion in unusually close relation with his self-portrait, leading to a reinterpretation of the motif as a metaphor for the suffering of the artist. James Ensor used the ecce homo motif in his ironic painting Christ and the Critics (1891), in which he portrayed himself as Christ.

Antonio Ciseri's 1871 Ecce Homo portrayal presents a semi-photographic view of a balcony seen from behind the central figures of a scourged Christ and Pilate (whose face is not visible). The crowd forms a distant mass, almost without individuality, and much of the detailed focus is on the normally secondary figures of Pilate's aides, guards, secretary and wife.

File:Munkácsy Ecce Homo part.JPG

Ecce Homo by Mihály Munkácsy, 1896

One of the more famous modern versions of the ecce homo motif was that by the Polish artist Adam Chmielowski, who went on to found, as Brother Albert, the Albertine Brothers (CSAPU) and, a year later, the Albertine Sisters (CSAPI), eventually becoming proclaimed a saint on 12 November 1989 by Pope John Paul II, the author of Template:Ill, a play about Chmielowski, written between 1944 and 1950, when the future Pontiff and later himself a saint was a young priest. Template:Ill (146 cm x 96.5 cm, unsigned, painted between 1879 and 1881), was significant in Chmielowski's life, as it is in Act 1 of Wojtyła's play. Pope John Paul II is said to have kept a copy of this painting in his apartment at the Vatican.Template:Sfn The original can be viewed in the Ecce Homo Sanctuary of the Albertine Sisters in Kraków. It was painted at a time when the painter was going through an inner struggle, trying to decide whether to remain an artist, or to give up painting to pursue the calling to minister to the poor.Template:Sfn

Especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, the meaning of ecce homo motif has been extended to the portrayal of suffering and the degradation of humans through violence and war. Notable 20th-century depictions are George Grosz's (1922–1923) and Lovis Corinth's Ecce Homo (1925). The 84 drawings and 16 watercolors of Grosz criticize the socio-political conditions of the Weimar Republic.Template:Sfn Corinth shows, from the perspective of the crowd, Jesus, a soldier, and Pilate dressed as a physician. Following the Holocaust of World War II, Otto Dix portrayed himself, in Ecce Homo with self-likeness behind barbed wire (1948), as the suffering Christ in a concentration camp.

Artworks

These are images of the narrative type, with other figures, rather than the devotional Man of Sorrows type.

• Ecce Homo (Bosch, 1470s), now Frankfurt
• Ecce Homo (Bosch, 1490s), follower of Bosch, now Indianapolis and Philadelphia
• Ecce homo (Mantegna), c. 1500, now Paris
• Ecce Homo (Caravaggio), c. 1605, Genoa
• Ecce Homo (Caravaggio, Madrid)
• Ecce Homo (Rubens), c. 1612 Hermitage Museum
• Ecce Homo (Luini), before 1532, Cologne
• Ecce Homo (Daumier), 1850, Essen

Gallery

• ΙϹ ΧϹ Ό ΝΥΜΦΊΟϹTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn
  ΙϹ ΧϹ Ό ΝΥΜΦΊΟϹTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn
• Ecce Homo, Nuno Gonçalves, 15th century
  Ecce Homo, Nuno Gonçalves, 15th century
• Hieronymus Bosch, 1470s
  Hieronymus Bosch, 1470s
• Jean Hey, 1494
  Jean Hey, 1494
• Ecce Homo, Abraham Janssens, (1567–1632)
  Ecce Homo, Abraham Janssens, (1567–1632)
• Correggio, 16th century
  Correggio, 16th century
• Tintoretto, 1546
  Tintoretto, 1546
• Ecce Homo, by Titian (1490–1576)
  Ecce Homo, by Titian (1490–1576)
• Ecce Homo by Andrea Solario, c. 1506
  Ecce Homo by Andrea Solario, c. 1506
• Quentin Massys, c. 1520
  Quentin Massys, c. 1520
• Rubens, 1612
  Rubens, 1612
• Jan Cossiers, c. 1620
  Jan Cossiers, c. 1620
• Mateo Cerezo, 1650
  Mateo Cerezo, 1650
• Ecce Homo, by Lodovico Cardi called Cigoli
  Ecce Homo, by Lodovico Cardi called Cigoli
• Ecce Homo, by Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674)
  Ecce Homo, by Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674)
• Ecce Homo, by Elias Moskos, 1648
  Ecce Homo, by Elias Moskos, 1648
• Ecce Homo, by Pedro de Mena, 17th century
  Ecce Homo, by Pedro de Mena, 17th century
• The statue of Ecce Homo, revered in Brazil as the Good Jesus
  The statue of Ecce Homo, revered in Brazil as the Good Jesus
• Ecce Homo, by Pierre Mignard, (1690)
  Ecce Homo, by Pierre Mignard, (1690)
• Ecce Homo, by Honoré Daumier, (1850)
  Ecce Homo, by Honoré Daumier, (1850)
• Antonio Ciseri (1871)
  Antonio Ciseri (1871)
• Ecce Homo, by Adam Chmielowski, 1879–1881
  Ecce Homo, by Adam Chmielowski, 1879–1881
• Lovis Corinth, 1925
  Lovis Corinth, 1925

Publications

• —
• Template:BNF. Template:ASIN. Template:ASIN. —
• — — Template:Langx.
• —
• —
• Template:Cite SEP

See also

• Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One IsTemplate:Efn
• Ecce homo qui est fabaTemplate:Efn
• Ecce MonoTemplate:Efn