« ECCE HOMO ». — Words spoken by Pilate (Io. 19:5), presenting Jesus to the people after the scourging.
I. ARCH OF THE E. H. — This is the name given in Jerusalem since the sixteenth century to the central part of a three-arched arcade which, at the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, spans the street, its sides enclosed within private buildings. It was introduced into the history of Jesus’ trial because it was believed to be the entrance gate to the praeto-
(fot. Anderson)
« ECCE HOMO » — Painting by Andrea Solari (first half of the sixteenth century). Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli.
rium, from which Pilate is supposed to have shown Jesus to the people, pronouncing those words. Two large stones, on which, it was said, Jesus and Pilate had stood at the moment of the condemnation or of the E. H., were displayed embedded at the top of the arch.
In 1878 the smaller arch, or northern opening, was enclosed within the austere yet elegant basilica called that of the E. H., and harmoniously frames its apse. The southern one was lost and incorporated into private buildings. Although archaeologists date the arch to the second or third century and identify it with the eastern gate of Aelia Capitolina, they nevertheless credit it with having preserved through the centuries the tradition concerning Jesus’ trial at the Antonia fortress, situated north of the Temple, whose remains have recently been discovered, together with the double-arched gate and the spacious courtyard or lithostrotos (Jo. 9, 13), in the foundations and surroundings of the Roman arch of the E. H.
II. ICONOGRAPHY
Among the scenes of the Passion, that of the E. H. was the latest to receive a defined iconographic treatment. Indeed, it is highly improbable that one can recognize, as certain scholars have wished, in representations dating from before the late Middle Ages the scene in which Christ, crowned with thorns and bearing evident marks of scourging on his flesh, with a reed in his hands in the manner of a scepter and a red cloth on his shoulders to simulate the royal purple, is shown by Pilate to the people.This representation in fact appears for the first time in a clearly defined form in the German medieval miniature (Codex Egberti, the work of the bishop of Trier from 977 to 993), and thereafter frequently in northern sculpture and painting of the fifteenth century. Suffice it to mention the painting of the E. H. belonging to the Westphalian school, now in the National Gallery in London, in which Pilate is seen intent on washing his hands, while Christ, pushed forward by executioners, stands beside him among soldiers and torturers. The theme became more clearly defined during the sixteenth century, in paintings and engravings, and was also taken up by Italian art, which left outstanding examples of it, to mention only a few, in the paintings of fra' Bartolomeo, Cigoli, and Sodoma in the Pitti Gallery in Florence, and in the paintings at Varallo, the work of Gaudenzio Ferrari.
Connected with the development of this theme, which during the nineteenth century found its most characteristic expression in the famous painting by Ciseri now in the Gallery of Modern Art in Florence, is another representation, likewise called the E. H., consisting solely of the sorrowful image of the isolated Christ, almost always shown half-length, likewise with his head crowned with thorns. His scourged body, while in his arms, bound at the wrists with cords or chains, he holds, in addition to or instead of the reed, a bundle of rods and the whip used in the scourging.
This image too, extremely frequent during the fifteenth century, and not only in the northern countries, became particularly widespread during the sixteenth century and even more so during the seventeenth, with the spread of the naturalistic spirit, logically inclined to encourage the dissemination of such an iconographic type. — Vedi tav. I.