(Jativa 1591–1652 Naples)
The Mocking of Christ,
oil on canvas, 106.2 x 86.8 cm, framed

Inscribed on the back of the canvas with the number ‘813’ and inscribed on the stretcher with the number ‘n 699’.

Provenance:
Private European collection;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 17 April 2013, lot 602;
Private European collection

Literature:
V. Farina (ed.), Artemisia e i pittori del conte: la collezione di Giangirolamo II Acquaviva d’Aragona a Conversano, Cava De’ Tirreni 2018, p. 134, fig. 38, p. 136 (as attributed to Pacecco de Rosa)

We are grateful to Nicola Spinosa for confirming the attribution to Jusepe de Ribera after examining the present painting in the original.

We are also grateful to Craig Felton for independently confirming the attribution to Jusepe de Ribera and for suggesting a date of circa 1615 for the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.

This canvas depicts the moment when Christ, crowned with thorns and holding a sceptre made of cane alluding ironically to his presumed regal status as ‘King of the Jews’, is mocked and insulted. Christ is presented to the turbaned Herod, who remains aloof, while a helmeted soldier exposes Christ - the legionary’s clenched hand drawing away the red mantle from Christ’s nude and lascerated form. In the centre foreground a young guardsman derides and disparages Christ, provocatively sticking his tongue out at him, while making an obscene gesture with his left hand.

This episode is recounted in all four Gospels and in this dramatic representation, Christ’s anguished condition is contrasted with his persecutors’ base manners and vulgar gestures, increasing the effective realism of the scene. Ribera thereby demonstrates his knowledge of an iconography that had its roots in northern art of the sixteenth century and became known to the Caravaggesque painters of seventeenth century Rome and Naples, largely thanks to the circulation of prints and drawings by German and Flemish masters.

As a subject ‘The mocking of Christ’ was broadly diffused from the thirteenth century both in painting and sculpture; particularly in the Low Countries and Germany it was handled with passages of accentuated realism, even reaching degrees of grotesque caricature. In Italy this dramatic episode from the life of Christ found particular popularity at the beginning of the seventeenth century in which its themes of profound pain and dignified acceptance were interpreted with vigorous realism and a heightened emotional charge, as exemplified by the Ecce Homo of Caravaggio (Museo di Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) painted shortly before his escape from Rome in 1606. This painting was to have a profound influence on the artists active in Rome during those years, including the young Ribera, and eventually these painters were to accent Caravaggeque naturalism with aspects of an even more markedly enhanced realism.

The present painting can be compared to The Mocking of Christ and Crowing with Thorns (Seville, Casa d’Alba collection: see G. Finaldi, in: El joven Ribera, exhibition catalogue, ed. by J. Milicua and J. Portùs, Madrid 2012, pp. 176-177), which was executed by Ribera in Naples between 1617 and 1618. A compositional divergence between these two works is evidenced by the absence of Herod in the Alba painting. The latter is characterised by vigorously Caravaggesque realism and can be dated to the same period as the works commissioned to the artist by the Dukes of Osuna for their Collegiate Church near Cordoba, these represent the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, Saint Gerome and the Angel of Justice, Saint Lawrence in prayer and Saint Peter penitent; today they are all displayed in the museum of the Collegiate Church (see N. Spinosa, Ribera. L’opera completa, Naples 2006, pp. 273-278; see G. Finaldi, op. cit., 2010, pp. 162–173).

As in the Mocking of Christ from the Alba collection, the present painting shows the extraordinary juxtaposition of theatrical interpretation against Ribera’s use of realism. The figures are placed within a shallow plane so as to strengthen the emphasis on the facial expression of the boy in the centre. The powerful figure of Christ, rendered with an accentuated and expressive intensity, closely resembles the Ecce Homo in the Real Academia di San Fernando in Madrid, also painted by Ribera around 1620. Even though the figure of Christ is represented in different positions in the other compositions, they all share a physical resemblance that may be due to the repeated use of the same model in these paintings. The image of Christ in the present painting, his face dripping with blood and showing deeply concentrated pain as he looks straight out at the viewer, may have been influenced by Titian, with whose work the Spanish artist was very familiar, having admired the Venetian’s paintings both in Roman collections and during Ribera’s early sojourn at Parma in the second decade of the seventeenth century.

The figure of Herod, in the present painting, is represented in profile, wearing an oriental turban and dressed in silk and fur; he is accompanied by a figure in the background who probably represents one of his ministers, along with the soldier denuding Christ. Herod recalls the representation of other turbaned figures depicted by the artist in hiscompositions of the same period, such as the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria) and Christ preparing for the Crucifixion (formerly Casa d’Alba collection, Church of Saint Mary, Cogolludo; see Spinosa, op. cit., 2006, pp. 280-281, no. A60, and p. 282, no. A62). The boy on the right in the Cogolludo picture may have been painted from the same model used to represent the young man mocking Christ in the present work. Both display similarly boyish features and seem to be inspired by the so-called ‘scugnizzi’ or street urchins of early seventeenth century Naples.

On the basis of these comparisons, Nicola Spinosa dates the present painting to immediately after 1620 and before 1624, and he compares it to the composition of the Madonna and Child and Saint Bruno in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. This period represented a crucial phase in Ribera’s artistic production, when, between Rome and Naples and under the influence of Caravaggio, he combined a vigorous realism with a greater interest in depicting the physical characteristics of form.