''Ecce Homo'' is an unfinished oil-on-canvas painting by the French painter and caricaturist

Honoré Daumier Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...

, created in 1850. It is in the collection of the

Museum Folkwang Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...

Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The painting, executed in undertones of various shades of brown, depicts a scene in the Good Friday trial of Jesus when Christ is presented to the mob as a figure of ridicule by

Pontius Pilate Pontius Pilate (; grc-gre, Πόντιος Πιλᾶτος, ) was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 AD. He is best known for being the official who presided over the trial of J ...

with the words "Ecce Homo", translated in the Bible as "Behold the Man", but more appropriately as an accusatory "Look at this man". The viewer is situated in the crowd in a position where he can observe Christ standing still and resolute, silhouetted against a sacred light, and asked to decide whether to sympathise with Him or with His tormentors. The work is one of only a few that Daumier undertook on religious subjects, as distinct from his several depictions of contemporary French social inequalities. The painting was included by French writer

Michel Butor Michel Butor (; 14 September 1926 – 24 August 2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator. Life and work Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul, a suburb of Lille, the third of seven childre ...

in his book selecting 105 decisive works of Western painting.Michel Butor, ''Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale'', Paris, Flammarion, 2019, pp. 234–235 (French)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ecce Homo (Daumier) Paintings by Honoré Daumier 1850 paintings Daumier Cultural depictions of Pontius Pilate Collection of the Museum Folkwang

See also

References