Christ and the Adulteress

The episode: the woman brought before him

John's eighth chapter gives it. A woman taken in adultery is brought to Christ as a test; the answer is that whoever is without sin should throw first; the accusers leave one by one. The scene is an argument rather than an action, and painting stages it as a semicircle of figures with the woman at the centre and the accusers around her.

Where it falls in the cycle

In the teaching in Jerusalem, late in the ministry, after the miracles and before the entry that begins the last week. It belongs with the encounters — the Samaritan at the well, the healing at the pool — in which the narrative slows to a single exchange. The passage is also notable for being absent from the earliest manuscripts of John, which is why it is sometimes printed apart, and that history does not appear in this record.

The catalogue entry

The record enters the work under Lorenzo Lotto, dated 1528, in the Louvre, Paris, France. It measures 126 x 99 cm, upright. The style is given as High Renaissance and the artist as Italian; the subject fields class the work as a group composition and under religion. The measured palette reads as brown and yellow. The entry records no patron, no church of origin and no later owner.