Ecce Homo

Christ rises from a dark ground in three-quarter view, the crown of thorns pressed into his hair and his bound hands raised before him as he turns his eyes toward heaven in an expression of pathos. Luca Giordano, the prolific Neapolitan master nicknamed Fa Presto — “make haste” — painted this Ecce Homo in the early 1660s, at the beginning of his career; long attributed to Murillo, it was reattributed to the young Giordano by Nicola Spinosa in the 1980s. The museum reads in it the naturalism of Ribera in the strongly veined hands, the legacy of Titian in the face, and the soft handling of Murillo, all fused into a personal synthesis, and notes that the pathos-filled bust was probably the fruit of a private commission — a figure the painter would revive years later in his signed David in Penitence. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.