Christ crowned with Thorns
XVI century. Oil on baltic oak planks.Not on display
Christ, crowned with thorns, wears the purplish red robe in which the executioners have clothed him, adorned with a delicate gold edging. His head is tilted to one side. Abundant tears stream from his open eyes. His blackened lips are parted, but do not reveal his teeth. His skin has a purplish tinge in the cheeks and around the eyes. Blood trickles from the various wounds caused by the crown of thorns down to his neck and chest, where the red merges with that of the various lacerations inflicted by his torturers.
When the panel painting was brought to attention, doubts arose as to its authorship. In 1933 the Prado officially catalogued it as the work of an anonymous painter, not specifying whether Spanish or Flemish, suggesting that the artist was ‘influenced by Albert Bouts’ and indicating that it was a bust ‘similar to that in the Palais de Justice in Dijon’. In 1945, however, it came to be attributed to a ‘pupil of Albert Bouts’. More recently Henderiks has included it as a Spanish-produced work in her very long list of replicas of Albrecht Bouts’s works.
Indeed, this devotional image of Christ crowned with thorns is based on a creation by Albrecht Bouts, of which many copies are known, the Dijon version being considered the prototype (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, inv. D 1948-1-P). The evidence that it was transferred by pouncing proves that it is a copy of that model. This procedure was very common in Albrecht Bouts’s workshop.
The popularity of the Ecce Homo models created by Albrecht Bouts led them to be constantly repeated, both in the artist’s workshop and by other followers. However, as the analysis of materials has shown, the work was executed in the Netherlands at a date compatible with the period when the artist’s workshop was busy creating similar images.
Pérez Preciado, José Juan, Fifteenth-century netherlandish painting at the Museo Nacional del Prado. Catalogue raisonné, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2024, p.71-73 nº.5
