Sevillian school; mid 17th century.

Sevillian school; mid-17th century.
"Ecce Homo".
Oil on panel.
It has a Spanish frame of the period.
Measurements: 32 x 24 cm; 52,5 x 43 cm (frame).
In this devotional canvas, painted for an altar or private chapel, the theme of the Ecce Homo is represented, very common in this type of paintings. The simple, clear composition, with Christ's face in the foreground, the absence of narrative details enhances the expressive power and pathos, designed to move the soul of the faithful who pray before the image, within a sense of tremendism very typical of the Baroque period in Catholic countries. The theme of Ecce Homo belongs to the Passion cycle and precedes the episode of the Crucifixion. Following this iconography, Jesus is presented at the moment when the soldiers mock him, after crowning him with thorns, dressing him in a purple tunic (here red, the symbolic colour of the Passion) and placing a reed in his hand, kneeling down and exclaiming "Hail, King of the Jews". The words "Ecce Homo" are those pronounced by Pilate when presenting Christ to the crowd; their translation is "behold the man", a phrase by which he mocks Jesus and implies that Christ's power was not such in comparison with that of the rulers who were judging him. Formally, this work is dominated by the highly contrasted and dramatic treatment of light, based on a spotlight that falls directly on the figure of Christ.
The dramatism that stands out in the scene, reflected in the blood of the body that falls on Christ's body, contrasts with the austere and recollected attitude of the body's posture. It is this bodily composition that brings the artist closer to the work of Murillo. Considered by some to be the painter who best defines the Spanish Baroque, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo exerted a notable influence on his Sevillian contemporaries and, after his death, his influence can be found in other schools even to the present day, especially in religious art. In the 18th century his language and iconographic formulas were widely followed and repeated, and during the Romantic period numerous copies of his works were made. However, it was in the Baroque period of the 18th century that the importance of his influence, spread by his numerous disciples and followers, was most evident. In fact, in that century he was the best known and most appreciated Spanish painter outside Spain, the only one of whom Sandrart includes a biography in his "Academia picturae eruditae", a work dating from the end of the 17th century. In the last decades of the 17th century, Murillo's emotional, sweet and delicate sentimentality prevailed in Seville over the more dramatic one of Valdés Leal, hence the predominance of his influence in the following century. As time went on, however, we find an increasingly superficial influence, focused on the imitation of models and compositions, but leaving aside his plastic language in favour of formulas more typical of the new century.