Pilate holds his hands over the basin.
Bible in art · Matthew
Pilate Washing His Hands
Albrecht Dürer · 1512
The Met, New York
Pilate Washing His Hands, dated 1512, is one of the sixteen plates of Dürer’s Engraved Passion.
Pilate sits at the left in a turban while a kneeling servant pours water over his hands into a basin; a man in a round hat bends close to speak to him. At the right, soldiers already lead Jesus away, and crosses stand on a hill above the town.
From the text
- Pilate washing his hands before the crowd (Matthew 27:24)
- Jesus handed over to be crucified (Matthew 27:26)
The artist’s own
- A servant in a tall pointed hat and the slashed sleeves of Dürer’s day
- The crosses already standing on the hill — the next scenes in the distance
- The date 1512 and the monogram in the sky
Details
Washing
The servant
A kneeling servant pours water from a jug.
Led away
Soldiers lead Jesus away, crowned with thorns.
The hill
Crosses on a hill beyond the town.
Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471–1528. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Fletcher Fund, 1919; acc. 19.73.11) · Engraving · Public Domain — The Met Open Access (CC0). The Met Collection API record: "isPublicDomain": true; The Met marks such works on its website "with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) icon".