Behold the Man

I didn’t see the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” I was disappointed, however, by a small moment in the preview. The makers made a big point of having the movie be in the original Latin and Aramaic. When Pontius Pilate parades the tortured Jesus before the Jewish crowds, he says, “ecce homo,” which means, “behold the man.” He is attempting to demonstrate to the potentially-rebellious Jews that Jesus is no divine Messiah, only a mortal man who can bleed, suffer, and be made to submit to Roman authority like anyone else.

My pedantic quibble is this: Pilate pronounces “ecce” wrong. He says, “eche.” I’m no Latin scholar, but it is my understanding that there are no soft “C” sounds in classical Latin. It should be pronounced “eke,” just as Caesar would have been pronounced “kaisar,” not “seesar” the way we say it today. The soft “C” pronunciation is from Medieval Church Latin, which did not exist circa 33 A.D. Any real scholars should feel free to correct me on this.

I know, I know. Who cares? It just irritated me. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

What’s all this have to do with art? It’s only tangential. I’ve been thinking about and looking at Renaissance depictions of the adult Jesus lately. Artists were called upon to paint various moments from the life of Jesus. Artists at the time produced this kind of religious art for customers and patrons who paid for conventional work that reinforced the religious conventions of the time. They sometimes managed to transcend the limits of the marketplace, however, with original work that is profoundly moving.

Here I’ll compare a late 15th century German painter, Hieronymus Bosch, with that of the 16th century Italian, Caravaggio. I’m doing that simply because I find their religious work compelling, and because I can’t do justice to the full range of this kind of work in a blog post (it would take a very long book).

	Here, for example, is “Ecce Homo,” by Bosch, from about 1475-80.
	Here’s is another one of the same scene by Bosch from the 1490’s. I like the earlier one better.
	This is Bosch’s “Christ Carrying the Cross,” from about 1515-16. It seems more like the work he’s most famous for—chaotic paintings of hell. In this one, the composition is an almost random spread of grotesque figures surrounding Jesus as he is forced to bear the cross.
	And this is my favorite Bosch depiction of Jesus. It’s “Christ Mocked,” from about 1495-1500. In it, Christ stands patiently while a group of grotesque fools make fun of him. Using caricature freely, he creates a strong sense of humanity in the juxtaposition between Christ and the figures surrounding him.
	Here is an “Ecce Homo,” by Caravaggio from about 1606. Here he shows his typical mastery of composition, light, and darkness to create a dramatic and moving scene.
	This is Caravaggio’s “Taking of Christ,” from about 1598, in which the Romans are led to Jesus by the traitor Judas. Look at the way that the dramatic lighting is used to lead the eye across the composition from right to left—the opposite direction than we normally expect.
	But Caravaggio’s most moving depiction of the adult Christ is his amazing, “The Entombment,” from about 1602-1603. Caravaggio makes Christ into a mere corpse, without any of the traditional indicators of divinity such as a halo or crown of thorns. In doing so he emphasizes Jesus’s humanity and the genuine grief of the mourners. Once again, he leads the eye from right to left into an unusual, but effective, focal point.