Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
Before Pilate: what is truth
The title names a line from the eighteenth chapter of John. Christ, brought before the Roman governor after the night hearings, is questioned about kingship and answers that he came to bear witness to the truth; Pilate replies with the question and, in the text, does not wait for an answer. The episode is a confrontation between two standing men and needs nothing else to be legible.
Where it falls in the Passion
The civil trial, after the appearance before the high priest and before the flagellation and the Ecce Homo. It is the last exchange in which Christ speaks at length; from the scourging onward the narrative gives him almost no words.
The catalogue entry
The record names Nikolai Ge as the artist and 1890 as the date of creation, with the painting in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. No dimensions are entered. The style is classed as Realism, the artist as Russian, and the period as the nineteenth century — one of the two most recent works in this group. The subject fields class it as a male figure subject and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown.
Sources
1 references- Ge, Nikolay — Getty ULAN
Russian painter and sculptor, 1831-1894
