Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
A gospel argument at panel scale
The episode is the trap set for Christ in the eighth chapter of John, when a woman taken in adultery is brought forward and the law of stoning is cited against her. The answer turns the question back on the accusers and they leave. Northern painters of the sixteenth century were drawn to it because it is a subject made entirely of faces in disagreement, with the crime itself off stage.
Where it falls
Among the Jerusalem confrontations of the ministry, before the last week. It has no fixed neighbour in the cycle: unlike the Passion scenes, which run in a strict order, the teaching episodes can be arranged freely and often were.
The record
The catalogue names Pieter Bruegel the Elder, dates the work to 1565, and gives the Courtauld Gallery in London. The recorded dimensions are 24 by 34 centimetres — the smallest measurement among the adulteress entries in this group, and small enough that the picture belongs to the tradition of the private cabinet panel rather than the church wall. The style is entered as Northern Renaissance and the artist as Flemish; the subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown.
Sources
7 references- Bruegel, Pieter, I — Getty ULAN
Flemish painter, ca. 1525-1569
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder — Wikipedia
Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder ( BROY-gəl, US also BROO-gəl; Dutch: [ˈpitər ˈbrøːɣəl] ; c. 1525–1530 – 9 September 1569) was among the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and p
- Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery — Wikidata
description: painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; inception: 1565; dimensions: 24.1 × 34.4 cm; collection: Courtauld Institute of Art
- artandarchitecture.org.uk — record for "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery"
Primary source record for this work (artandarchitecture.org.uk).
- Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (Bruegel) — Wikipedia
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery is a small panel painting in grisaille (near monochrome) by the Netherlandish Renaissance printmaker and painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It is signed and dated 1565. Jesus and the woman taken in adul
- philamuseum.org — reference for "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (Bruegel)"
Authoritative source for this work (philamuseum.org).
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery - WGA03469 — Wikimedia Commons
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
