Flagellation of Christ

The scourging

The flagellation is given in a single clause in the gospels: Pilate had him scourged. Painting expanded that clause into one of the fixed Passion subjects, built around a column, a bound figure, and one or two men with rods or cords. The column is the identifying object; without it the scene reads as an unspecified assault.

Where it falls in the Passion

After the trials and before the crowning with thorns and the Ecce Homo. In the Passion sequence it is the first of the tortures, and cycles that separate the episodes usually run flagellation, mocking, and presentation to the crowd in that order.

The catalogue entry

The record gives Caravaggio as the artist and 1607 as the date of creation, with the painting at the National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples. It measures 390 by 260 centimetres — an upright canvas at altar scale, among the largest in this group. The style is classed both as Baroque and as tenebrism, and the artist as Italian. The subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown and yellow.