Christ and the Adulteress

The woman brought to be judged

The episode is in the eighth chapter of John. A woman taken in adultery is brought before Christ as a test: the law commands stoning, and the questioners want to see whether he will contradict it. He writes on the ground, says that whoever is without sin should throw the first stone, and the accusers leave one by one. It is a scene of speech and withdrawal, with no miracle in it.

Where it falls

During the teaching in Jerusalem, in the ministry, before the last week. Ten works in this catalogue carry the episode in their title, and their recorded dates run from 1510 to 1917 — a courtroom scene without a court, and one that gave painters a crowd of individualised accusers to work with.

The record

The catalogue names Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, dates the work to 1751, and gives the Louvre in Paris. It measures 84 by 105 centimetres, a horizontal at modest scale. The style is entered as Rococo and the artist as Italian; the subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as ochre. The record holds no note on commission, and the eighteenth-century route to the Louvre is not given.