Bible in art · Luke

The Passion: The Mocking of Christ

Lucas van Leyden · 1521
The Cleveland Museum of Art

This fifth plate of Lucas van Leyden’s Passion of 1521 shows a cruel game in a small vaulted room. The guards’ caps, sleeves and boots are of his own day.

Jesus sits with his eyes covered by a cloth. The guards crowd round him: one raises his hand to strike, another bends before him, another grins and points. A tankard and a halberd lie on the floor.

From the text

The men holding Jesus began to mock Him and beat Him (Luke 22:63)
They blindfolded Him: “Prophesy! Who hit You?” (Luke 22:64)

The artist’s own

Guards in feathered hats and slashed sleeves
A tankard on the floor — a guardroom of Lucas’s time

Details

Blindfolded

Jesus sits with a cloth over his eyes.

The blow

A guard raises his hand to strike.

Mock honour

A guard bends in front of him.

The tankard

A tankard on the floor.

Lucas van Leyden, Netherlandish, 1494–about 1533. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1923.55.5) · Engraving · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).