Christ at the Column

Christ at the Column

The title names the flagellation, isolated. Where a narrative flagellation shows the soldiers at work, the column type removes them and leaves the bound figure alone with the pillar — an episode turned into a devotional object. The column itself became a relic in its own right in medieval piety, which is part of why the subject detached from the scene around it.

Where it falls

Inside the praetorium, between the sentence and the crowning with thorns. Nine titles in this catalogue name the flagellation or the scourging; this is the variant in which the episode has been stripped back to one figure and one architectural element.

The record

The catalogue names Hans Memling, dates the work to 1490, and gives the Mateu Collection in Barcelona as the location — a named holding rather than a public museum. Twenty-five entries in this catalogue give the location only as a private collection; a named collection like this one is recorded fewer than a dozen times. It measures 59 by 34.5 centimetres, a narrow upright at well under life size. The style is entered as Northern Renaissance and the artist as Flemish. The measured palette reads as ochre. The entry says nothing about a companion panel, and none is inferred.