The Mocking of Christ

The mocking

After the scourging the soldiers dress Christ in a robe, press a crown of thorns onto his head, and mock him as king. Some accounts add a blindfold and blows, with the demand that he name who struck him. That detail is what separates this episode from the crowning: the mocking is about sight taken away and a question asked, and painters used a covered face to carry it.

Its place in the sequence

Between the flagellation and the presentation to the crowd, in the short stretch of the Passion set inside the governor's quarters. It is one of the episodes in which Christ is surrounded and outnumbered, and cycles place it immediately before the road to Calvary.

The record

The catalogue gives Matthias Grunewald as the painter, 1503 as the date, and the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, as the location. It measures 109 by 74.3 centimetres, upright. The style is classed as Northern Renaissance and the artist as German; the subject fields file the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown. The record holds no note on the commission or on the panel's history before Munich.