Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.
John 19:1, KJV
And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barab'bas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.
Mark 15:15, KJV
This work depicts a scene from Christ’s Passion. “Passion” simply means “pain”, and here Jesus is shown bound to a pillar, before the first stroke of the lash has landed, before his blood has been spilt.
In three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and John, the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, who presides over the trial of Jesus, causes Jesus to be scourged, or beaten with a whip or flail. In the Book of John, it comes before Jesus is sentenced to die, in Mark and Matthew afterwards.
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In John’s version of the story, after the scourging , Jesus is further abused when Pilate’s men place a crown of thorns on his head, and Pilate shows Christ thus humiliated to the crowd, and says that he has no reason to execute him. So the scourging appears to be a way to appease the angry crowds call for blood, without going as far as killing Jesus.
But the assembled priests and officers call for Jesus’ death. Pilate goes back repeatedly to the crowd and tries to persuade them to give up their demands for execution, and offers to give Jesus the traditional Passover amnesty. But the mob becomes even more agitated, and chooses instead to free Barabbas, a murderer. Finally Pilate gives in, as if he’s desperate to preserve order in Jerusalem.
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In Dante’s Inferno, Pilate, despised by God and Satan both for cowardice, is consigned to wander with the Apathetic, outside the gates of Hell, eternally tormented by wasps. But in the Coptic and Ethiopic churches, which admit the Gospel of Nicodemus, Pilate repents and is forgiven, and becomes a martyr and saint.
Bound Christ is made from slices of images of the life of Jesus, from pictures of the Nativity, on through his miracles, to the Last Supper, the Passion, Crucifixion, and beyond to the Resurrection, and the Jesus of the Last Judgement and Apocalypse.
This is the largest work I’ve made so far, and took two months to complete. |
