Christ Before the High Priest

The night trial

After the arrest Christ is taken before the high priest and questioned, in the first of the hearings that occupy the night. The gospels set the scene indoors and after dark, with witnesses, an accusation of blasphemy, and the denial of Peter taking place in the courtyard outside. Painting keeps two figures at a table and lets a single artificial light do the rest of the work.

Its place in the sequence

Between the arrest in Gethsemane and the appearance before Pilate. The religious hearing comes first and the civil one after, and the cycle usually shows both, because the two trials answer different questions — the first about blasphemy, the second about kingship.

The record

The catalogue gives Gerard van Honthorst, dates the work to 1617, and places it in the National Gallery, London. No dimensions are entered in the record. The style is classed both as Baroque and as tenebrism, and the artist as Dutch. The subject fields file the work under religious cultural heritage. The measured palette reads as brown, which is what a scene lit by one flame measures as. Nothing about the commission appears in the entry.