Ecce homo

The present drawing depicts a key scene from the

Passion of Christ. According to the Gospel of John,

the Roman governor Pontius Pilate presented the

captive Savior to the people of Jerusalem with the

words “Ecce Homo” (Behold the man).1 Contrary

to the artistic conventions of the period, Christ and

Pontius Pilate, the two protagonists in the episode,

are not presented frontally or in the center of the

composition—in fact, Pilate cannot be seen at all.

The armed soldier in the immediate foreground directs

the viewer’s gaze away from the stooped figure

of Christ behind him. He is evidently reacting with

a sideward turn of his head to something occurring

outside the picture plane—possibly the governor’s

command to lead the prisoner away. “Then he

handed Jesus over to them to be crucified. So they

took Jesus.”2 The richly contrasting play of light

and shadow, achieved through white and brownish

shadings on the gray prepared paper, endows the

group with great plasticity and liveliness.

On the lower-right edge of the drawing, the furious

mass of people, armed with lances and halberds,

appears to be approaching the place of judgment.

In a parallel narrative, the ensuing course of

events is depicted directly above. Christ bears his

cross out of the city toward the hill of Golgotha

in the background while being tormented by the

soldiers. This scene is merely suggested by a few

pen strokes and terse white highlights. A sweeping

cityscape provides the backdrop: a portico with

Corinthian columns at left, a spire in the center, and

a Renaissance-style archway on the right combine

fantastic and contemporary elements and transpose

the historical Jerusalem into a sixteenth-century

city.

The traces of a grid, which are particularly visible

in the upper third of the drawing, show the work

to be a preliminary study. Applied with a powdery

substance, the lines of the gridwork provided a

guide for the artist to translate the composition

into a different medium. A sheet in Oxford, Pilate

Washing His Hands, attributed to Jan Swart van

Groningen (1490/1500–1560/70), depicts the moment

that immediately follows Ecce Homo in the Passion

narrative (fig. 1).3 The virtually identical manner of

execution, the matching size, and the compositional

arrangement of the figures strongly suggest a close

connection between the production of the two

drawings. The strikingly narrow vertical format

and the subjects of the two scenes, commonly

combined within a single narrative context around

1550, prompted Hoß to propose the sheets originally

served as designs for the wings of a Passion

altarpiece.4

Duke Albert von Sachsen-Teschen (1738–1822)

acquired the drawing as a work of Pieter Coecke

van Aelst the Elder (1502–1550), and Benesch was

the first to associate it with Jan Swart.5 The artist’s

biography is sparsely documented, and there is a

great deal of uncertainty regarding both the date

and duration of his possible journey to Italy and

residence in Gouda.6 It is highly likely, however,

that Swart was active in Antwerp as a painter,

printmaker, and draftsman from the late 1520s,

creating well-received and widely disseminated

compositions in the orbit of artists such as Dirck

Vellert (1480/85–1547) [31] and Coecke van Aelst

[32, 33, 70].7

 

1. John 19:5.

2. John 19:16.

3. See Hoß 2007, 451–53, no. 125.

4. Hoß 2007, 452, 570.

5. The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Archive of the Collection,

Cahier, 7849; see also the handwritten annotation on the

Albertina copy; Benesch O. 1928, 15, no. 69a.

6. To date, the only source regarding Swart is Karel van

Mander’s (1548–1606) Schilder-Boek of 1604; see Van Mander

1604, 227v–228r.

7. On the reasons for placing Swart in Antwerp,

see Dyballa 2018, 296n32.

 

Emily J. Peters, Laura M. Ritter (Hg.), AK Tales of the City. Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel, Cleveland Museum of Art 9.10.2022 - 8.1.2023, New Haven 2022, Kat. Nr. 30