02 Works, Interpretation of the bible, Caravaggio's Christ Crowned with Thorns, with Footnotes #191

Caravaggio  (1571–1610)

Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. between 1602 and 1604

Oil on canvas

height: 1,270 mm (50 in); width: 1,655 mm (65.15 in)

Kunsthistorisches Museum

After interrogation by Pontius Pilate, Christ is made to wear a crown of thorns by the soldiers. He is thus mocked as King of the Jews. While previously regarded as a Roman or Neapolitan variation of a lost Caravaggio, this picture has now been confirmed as an original by the discovery of certain documents. Other arguments for its authenticity previously put forward included technical idiosyncrasies of the painter, such as the contour lines engraved with the stem of the brush to be found on Christ’s head, and on the shoulders, chest and hands of both henchmen. More on this painting

Northern Caravaggesque Master

The Crowning with Thorns  

Oil on canvas

128 x 100.5 cm.; 50⅜ x 39½ in.

Private collection

The subject of the Crowning of Thorns was well suited to interpretation by Caravaggesque painters, whose preference for intense staging and dramatic lighting matched its harsh realism.

Their compositions vary considerably, not least in the choreography of the figures; the changing emphasis on the crown of thorns (which here is forced down brutally onto Christ’s head with a stick); and the number of henchmen who encircle Him (in some cases as many as nine). Here the picture’s focus on only three figures heightens the drama. The centre of the composition is dominated by the tilting body of the seated Christ, thrust into the foreground, while two men press in close. The viewer is confronted not only with the mocking expression of one of Christ’s tormentors but, more poignantly, by the direct gaze of Christ himself. More on this painting

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 in Caravaggio – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious. Caravaggio's innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro which came to be known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value).

He gained attention in the art scene of Rome in 1600 with the success of his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success poorly. He was jailed on several occasions, vandalized his own apartment, and ultimately had a death sentence pronounced against him by the Pope after killing a young man, possibly unintentionally, on May 29, 1606. He fled from Rome with a price on his head. He was involved in a brawl in Malta in 1608, and another in Naples in 1609. This encounter left him severely injured. A year later, at the age of 38, he died under mysterious circumstances in Porto Ercole in Tuscany, reportedly from a fever while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.

Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. More on Caravaggio

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