Christ Cleansing the Temple

Bernardino Mei · about 1655
Getty Center, Los Angeles

Bernardino Mei, a painter from Siena who later worked in Rome, made this canvas around 1655. He brings the figures right up to the front edge, so the viewer seems to stand in the middle of the scuffle.

Jesus lunges forward with a whip of cords raised; around him the sellers shrink away — an old woman clutching her doves, a man holding his coins, a boy lifting a basket out of the way, a child tumbling to the ground.

From the text

Men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and money changers (John 2:14)

“He made a whip out of cords” (John 2:15)

He poured out the coins of the money changers (John 2:15)

To those selling doves: “Get these out of here!” (John 2:16)

The artist’s own

Only a few columns to show the temple courts

Sellers of bread and an old woman in a striped headwrap

Life-size figures packed close, in the dramatic style of seventeenth-century Rome

Details

The whip

A whip of knotted cords raised high in Jesus’ hand.

Jesus

Frowning, he leans into the crowd in a red robe and blue mantle.

The old woman

In a striped headwrap, she cries out and pulls back.

Doves

White doves clutched in an arm, one with its head raised.

Coins

At the edge, gold coins pass from one hand into another.

Bread

A young woman carries a basket of loaves on her head.

Bernardino Mei, Italian, 1612–1676. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (69.PA.27) · Oil on canvas · Images provided here are believed to be in the public domain and are available under CC0 through Getty’s Open Content Program. (Getty record: "No Copyright", http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

The verses

John 2:13–16When the Jewish Passover was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts He found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money changers seated at their tables. So He made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those selling doves He said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn My Father’s house into a marketplace!”

Matt 21:12–13Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”