Nerissa

Artist: John William Godward (English, 1861–1922)

Date: 1906

Medium: Oil on canvas

The briefest of squibs today on one of my favorite visual artists since boyhood, Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). David’s period of activity stretched from the end of the Ancien Régime, through the Revolutionary Period (when he was an ally of Robespierre), the Napoleonic Era, and the Bourbon Restoration (when he lived in exile in the Low Countries). David’s heroic portraits, and works on…

Allegory of the Surrender of Ulm, 20 October 1805, and 

Allegory of the Battle of Austerlitz, 2 December 1805

by Antoine-François Callet, 1806

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1880

The Roman flagellum was made with a handle affixed with several cords or leather thongs weighted with jagged pieces of metal or bone at the tips to intensify each excruciating blow.

While Bouguereau's indisputably masterful painting is dramatic, heart-wrenching and reverent, Christ is portrayed in the conventional form prevalent in religious art: wan, feeble, conquered.

This is actually at odds with the Gospel account that states that after his scourging, Pilate, no principled sympathizer by any stretch of the imagination, was impressed enough with the unyielding strength and dignity of Jesus that he presents Christ to the mob and proclaims to them: “Look! The man!”​—John 19:4, 5.

Pilate's words carry no context of mockery or irony; they appear to be an acknowledgement of Jesus' remarkable endurance and uncommon composure. It seems unlikely that a Roman governor, accustomed to and a jaded dispenser of cruelty and death as a daily order of business, would state this of someone who had reacted like any other victim to the brutal scourging just inflicted.

MWW Artwork of the Day (8/31/21) Felice Casorati (Italian, 1883–1963) Silvana Cenni (1922) Tempera on canvas, 205 x 105 cm. Private Collection, Torino