Correggio, 'Christ presented to the People (Ecce Homo)', probably about 1525-30

Christ presented to the People (Ecce Homo)

Correggio

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, is condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘Behold the man’) were the words used by Pilate when he presented Christ to the people before the Crucifixion (John 19: 2–5). Pilate, wearing a turban, raises his hand to indicate that he is speaking. The Virgin Mary swoons and is supported by Saint John the Evangelist. The soldier on the right may be Longinus, the Roman centurion who recognised Christ’s divinity at the Crucifixion.

During Correggio’s time, it was common in paintings of this subject to put the viewer in the place of the crowd that condemned Christ to death – the position we occupy here. However, the swooning Virgin is not mentioned in the Gospels and is not usually represented. Correggio was probably inspired by the frontispiece of Dürer’s Small Engraved Passion, which shows Christ crowned with thorns with the Virgin and Saint John. Correggio’s Virgin scrapes her nails along the parapet as she falls backwards, a detail unique to this painting.

In-depth

Correggio shows Christ bound and crowned with thorns at the moment when he is condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. In the New Testament, ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘Behold the man’) were the words used by Pilate when he presented Christ to the people before the Crucifixion (John 19: 2–5). Pilate, wearing a turban, stands in the background, his hand in a rhetorical gesture to indicate that he is speaking. Correggio’s Pilate seems to derive from the print of the same subject in Dürer’s engraved Passion (British Museum, London).

Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, swoons and is supported by Saint John the Evangelist, wearing his traditional colours of red and green. The soldier to the right looks at Christ with an expression of respect tinged with love, as though conversion is dawning on him. He may be Longinus, the centurion who recognised Christ’s divinity when he was on the Cross.

During Correggio’s time, it was common in paintings of this subject to put the viewer in the place of the crowd who condemned him to death – the position we occupy here, as his judges. However, the swooning Virgin is not mentioned in the Gospel accounts of this episode and is not usually represented. She is more commonly shown swooning in images of Christ carrying the Cross – for example, Boccaccio Boccaccino’s Christ carrying the Cross and the Virgin swooning of about 1501 and Raphael’s famous Spasimo di Sicilia (Prado, Madrid). Correggio was probably inspired by the frontispiece of Dürer’s Small Engraved Passion, which shows Christ crowned with thorns with the Virgin and Saint John. Correggio’s Virgin scrapes her nails along the parapet as she falls backwards, a detail unique to this painting.

This is the last of the surviving pictures of the Passion that Correggio painted during the 1520s. Its patron is unknown, but the painting was owned by the Prati family in Parma when Agostino Carracci engraved it in 1587, and it may have been commissioned by them. We do not know exactly when it was painted, but it influenced a fresco by Francesco Maria Rondani in Parma Cathedral which was completed in 1531, so it must have been before that date. Parmigianino seems to have been familiar with the composition before he moved to Rome in 1524, as a drawing by him now in the Courtauld Institute, London, appears to be related to Correggio’s figures of the Virgin and Saint John. Parmigianino’s Virgin is closer to Correggio’s first idea for the Virgin, which is invisible in the final version of the painting but revealed in X-ray images.

X-ray images also show many other changes were made while the picture was being painted, especially to the figure of Christ. Correggio changed the position of Christ’s hands, exposed more of his torso and altered the expression on his face to one of extreme sorrow to appeal to our pity, love and compassion. It is possible that Correggio worked on the painting over several years. A lost drawing by Correggio dating from 1524, now known through an eighteenth-century print by Francesco Rosapina (British Museum, London), may have been Correggio’s first idea for the picture and was perhaps the version of the composition that Parmigianino saw.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Christ presented to the People (Ecce Homo)
Artist: Correggio
Artist dates: active 1494; died 1534
Date made: probably about 1525-30
Medium and support: oil on wood
Dimensions: 99.7 × 80 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1834
Inventory number: NG15
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Alexander Day

Charles William Stewart Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry
Frame: 16th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

No. 188 in the 1783 catalogue of the Colonna Gallery, Rome. Before then its history is confused owing to conflicting accounts by the early writers. Agostino Carracci’s engraving of 1587, which corresponds closely with no. 15, contains the inscribed information that the painting from which the engraving was taken was then in the Prati collection, Parma. Scannelli (1657) mentions such a picture as still in the Prati possession. A second version, apparently of the same design, is first mentioned in 1591 as belonging to Francesco and Lorenzo Salviati in Florence. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Prati and Salviati pictures are constantly confused. The most probable chain of events is that recorded by Pungileoni who quotes statements to the effect that the Prati picture had been sold to the Colonna between 1675 and 1680, the Prati family retaining a copy which later passed to the Dalla Rosa or Bajardi families with other Prati possessions. An alternative theory current in eighteenth-century Rome maintained that the Colonna picture was a copy, the original having been taken to France, while a third held that it was the Salviati picture and not the Prati one which had been acquired by the Colonna. It is certain that the Colonna picture was not a copy, since it is demonstrably identical with no. 15 in which the X-ray evidence would preclude such a possibility, while the third theory is incompatible with a statement in the Udny sale catalogue of 1802 to the effect that the version in that collection had been in the possession of the Salviati family at Florence until it was taken to London.

Sold by the Colonna to Alexander Day and by him, in 1802, to Ferdinand IV of Naples. Taken from Naples by Madame Murat when she fled on the night of 20th May, 1815 to Vienna where sold by her about 1822 to Lord Stewart, later 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, from whom purchased, 1834.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1987; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Bibliography

1781

C.G. Ratti, Notizie storiche sincere intorno la vita e le opere del celebre pittore Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Finale 1781
1783

Galleria Colonna, Catalogo dei quadri, e pitture esistenti nel palazzo dell'eccellentissima casa Colonna in Roma: Coll'indicazione dei loro autori diviso in sei parti. Secondo i rispettivi appartamenti, Rome 1783
1787

A.R. Mengs, Opere di Antonio Raffaello Mengs, Rome 1787
1787

F.W.B. von Ramdohr, Über Mahlerei und Bildhauerarbeit in Rom für Liebhaber des Schönen in der Kunst, Leipzig 1787
1816

S. Morelli, La pittura comparata, Rome 1816
1817

L. Pungileoni, Memorie istoriche di Antonio Allegri detto il Correggio, 3 vols, Parma 1817
1831

D.E. Williams, The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, 2 vols, London 1831
1836

J.D. Passavant, Tour of a German Artist in England, London 1836
1843

L. Viardot, Les musées d'Espagne, d'Angleterre et de Belgique, Paris 1843
1853

J.D. Passavant, Die christliche Kunst in Spanien, Leipzig 1853
1854

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being and Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss. […], vol. 2, trans. E. Eastlake, London 1854
1871

J. Meyer, Correggio, Leipzig 1871
1896

C. Ricci, Antonio Allegri da Correggio, London 1896
1902

T. Conca, 'Inventory of Pictures Acquired by the Venuti', Le Gallerie Nazionali Italiane: notizie e documenti, V, 1902
1907

G. Gronau, Correggio, des Meisters Gemälde in 196 Abbildungen, Stuttgart 1907
1930

C. Ricci, Correggio, London 1930
1962

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools (excluding the Venetian), London 1962
1970

C. Gould, 'On Dürer's Graphic and Italian Painting', Gazette des beaux-arts, VI/75, 1970, pp. 109-12
1975

C. Gould, Delaroche and Gautier: Gautier's Views on the 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' and on other Compositions by Delaroche, London 1975
1987

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
1992

J. Shearman, Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance, Princeton 1992
1993

M. Di Giampaolo and A. Muzzi, Correggio: Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1993
1995

A. Muzzi, 'L'espressione del dolore in alcune opere del Correggio degli anni Venti', Dialoghi di storia dell'arte, I, 1995, pp. 134-45
1997

D. Ekserdjian, Correggio, London 1997
1998

M. Heimbürger, 'Caravaggio e Dürer', Paragone, XLIX/583, 1998, pp. 19-48
2000

G. Finaldi, The Image of Christ, London 2000
2000

P. Costamagna, 'La collection de peintures d'une famille florentine établie à Rome: L'Inventaire après décès du duc Anton Maria Salviati dressé en 1704', Nuovi studi, V/8, 2000, pp. 177-233
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2001

O. Pujmanová, 'Correggian Paintings in Prague', Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague, II, 2001, pp. 38-48
2002

J. Conlin, The Origins and History of the National Gallery 1753-1860, Phd Thesis, University of Cambridge 2002
2008

L.F. Schianchi (ed.), Correggio (exh. cat. Galleria Nazionale, Camera di San Paolo, Cattedrale, Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista, 20 September 2008 - 25 January 2009), Milan 2008

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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You've viewed 6 of 11 works

Correggio, 'Christ presented to the People (Ecce Homo)', probably about 1525-30

About the work

Overview

In-depth

Key facts

Details

Provenance

Additional information

Source

Bibliography

About this record

Images

More works by Correggio