Sevillian school; late 17th century.

Sevillian school; late 17th century.
‘Christ tied to the column’.
Oil on panel.
It shows repainting and restorations on the pictorial surface.
The frame shows damage caused by xylophages.
Measurements: 157 x 86 cm.

Christ tied at the pillar is a highly dramatic but non-narrative theme, designed to encourage the faithful to be moved by Christ's physical suffering and to admire his acceptance of the misfortunes he must suffer in order to redeem mankind. In this case Jesus is depicted in solitude, despondent, as his sorrowful face and frustrated gesture suggest. The thinness of his legs and the sombre body, attenuated by the tenebrist lighting, are features that deepen the Calvary of the last moments of Jesus' life. The scene takes place in the Praetorium in Jerusalem, the centre of Roman power, where Christ has arrived for the second and last time, after passing through various stages. He is exhibited before the crowd (‘Ecce Homo’), who preferred to release Barabbas rather than him and, either before or after this exhibition, he is stripped of his clothes and tied to a pillar, where he is subjected to mockery concerning his alleged crime, being ‘king of the Jews’, and torture, including scourging and the crowning with thorns.

Aesthetically the work is close to the painting of Pedro de Campaña y Blas de Prado, a Spanish Mannerist painter, renowned for his work in Toledo Cathedral. In 1586 he worked on the restoration of the frescoes painted by Juan de Borgoña in the Chapter House of Toledo Cathedral, where between 1591 and 1592 he painted the coats of arms of the prelates and their inscriptions. Between 1589 and 1590 he was called to El Escorial to appraise the paintings of Pellegrino Tibaldi and other Italian masters, as well as the ‘ornaments’ made for Titian's Saint Margaret and for a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Sent by Philip II, whom the sovereign of Fez would have asked to send him a famous painter, in May 1593 he set out for Morocco with the commission to portray the members of the court, a journey financed by the 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán. When he passed through Seville he was met by Francisco Pacheco, who wrote in The Art of Painting that ‘when he went to Morocco on the King's orders, he was carrying some very well painted canvases of fruit that I saw’. Pacheco's statement, given the date on which it occurred, together with his status as Sánchez Cotán's teacher, place Blas de Prado at the origins of the Spanish still life, although none by his hand has survived. He finally settled in Madrid and it was not long before he resumed his contacts with the churches of the archbishopric of Toledo, as in March he was already working with Pedro Ruiz de Elvira on the gilding of the altarpiece in Villarrubia de los Ojos.