Judas kisses Jesus.
Bible in art · Matthew
The Passion: The Capture of Jesus
Lucas van Leyden · 1521
The Cleveland Museum of Art
The third plate of Lucas van Leyden’s Passion of 1521 is crowded to the edges. Spears, clubs and lanterns fill the dark top of the sheet.
Judas kisses Jesus while soldiers seize him by the collar. Jesus stands still. Below at the right, Peter raises his sword over a man who has fallen on his back with a lantern.
From the text
- “Greetings, Rabbi!” and he kissed Him (Matthew 26:49)
- The men seized Jesus and arrested Him (Matthew 26:50)
- Simon Peter struck the servant of the high priest, Malchus (John 18:10)
The artist’s own
- Soldiers in helmets of Lucas’s time, with spiked clubs and lances
- Malchus fallen on his back with a lantern
Details
The kiss
Jesus
He stands still as he is seized.
Peter
He raises his sword.
Malchus
The servant lies on his back on the ground.
Lucas van Leyden, Netherlandish, 1494–about 1533. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1923.55.3) · Engraving · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).