Christ crowned with thorns

The crown, held still

The crowning with thorns belongs to the guardroom, between the scourging and the road out of the city. In its full form it is a scene of several soldiers. In the form this title names it is a single figure wearing the crown, taken out of the action and turned toward the viewer — the episode used as an image rather than told as an event.

Its place in the sequence

After the flagellation, before the carrying of the cross, inside the few hours between sentence and execution. Twelve titles in this catalogue use the word thorn, which makes it one of the most repeated moments of the Passion recorded here, and northern workshops of the later fifteenth century produced the single-figure version in quantity for private devotion.

The catalogue entry

The record names Hans Memling — one of eight works entered under this artist in this catalogue — and dates the panel to 1470. The location is the Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, Italy. It measures 52 x 32 cm, a narrow upright, the format of a devotional panel held or hung close. The style is entered as Northern Renaissance and the artist as Flemish; the subject fields class the work as a single male figure. The measured palette reads as ochre and red. No commission or earlier owner appears in the record.