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''This article is a work in progress being translated from the German Wiki''

''Ecce Homo'' ( Latin for ''Behold the Man''), were the words used by Pontius Pilate when he presented a Scourged Jesus Christ , bound and crowned with thorns, to the hostile crowd shortly before the Crucifixion . It is the Latin translation in the Vulgata of the Greek phrase ''ιδου ο ανθρωπος''.

According to the spoke these words when surrendering a scourged Jesus Christ over to the hostile crowd, because he could see no reason for Jesus' conviction. Jesus had been tortured, was wearing purple robes and a crown of thorns, and the crowd was pushing for his Crucifixion . ''Ecce Homo'' therefore can also refer to any work of art in which Jesus is depicted wearing a crown of thorns. The King James Version translates this phrase as "Behold the Man!"


''ECCE HOMO'' AS AN ARTISTIC MOTIF


In Christian Art , ''ecce homo'' can refer to one of two themes:

  • the actual illustration of the scene from John 19 (also called ''the scourging of christ'') which depicts at least Pilate and Christ himself, as well as the mocking crowd and parts of the city of Jerusalem.


  • devotional pictures with Jesus as a lone, standing half or full figure with a purple robe, loincloth, crown of thorns and torture wounds, especially on his head. If the wounds of the crucifixion are also depicted (Nail wounds on the limbs, spear wounds on the sides), we may then also speak of a ''Man of Sorrow(s)'' (also ''Misericordia''). If Christ is sitting down (usually supporting himself with his hand on his thigh), we may refer to it as ''Christ at rest''. Both depcitions are however often described by ''ecce homo''.


The first depictions of the ''ecce homo'' scene in the fine arts appear in the 9th and 10th centuries in Syrian-Byzantine culture. Occidental depictions in the Middle Ages that often seem to depict the ''ecce homo'' scene, (and are usually interpreted as such) more often than not only show the crowning of thorns and the mocking of Christ, (cf. the '' Egbert Codex '' and the '' Codex Aureus Epternacensis '') which precede the actual ''ecce homo'' scene in the Bible.

The motif found increasing currency as the Passion became a central theme in occidental piousness in the 15th and 16th centuries. The ''ecce homo'' theme was included not only in passion plays of middle-age theatre, but also in scenic illustrations of the story of the Passion, as in the Passions of Albrecht Dürer or the prints of Martin Schongauer . The scene was (especially in France) often depicted as a sculpture or group of sculptures; even altarpieces and other paintings with the motif were produced (by e.g. Hieronymus Bosch or Hans Holbein ). Like the passion plays, the visual depictions of the ''ecce homo'' scene were used time and again to show the people of Jerusalem as being antisemitic, characterized by excited gestures and hideous facial features.

The motif of the lone figure of a suffering Christ seems to be staring directly at the observer and enables him/her to personally identify with the events of the Passion arose in the late Middle Ages. A parallel development was that the simliar motifs of the ''Man of Sorrow'' and ''Christ at rest'' increased in importance. The motif was used repeatedly in later graphic reproductions (e.g. by Jackques Callot and Rembrandt Van Rijn ), the paintings of the Renaissance and the Baroque , as well as in Baroque sculptures.

In 1498, Albrecht Dürer depicted the suffering of Christ in the ''ecce homo'' scene of his ''Great Passion''in unusually close relation with his self-portrait, leadting to a reinterpretation of the motif as a metaphor for the suffering of the artist. As a representation of the injustice of critique, James Ensor used the ''ecce homo'' motif in his bitingly ironic print ''Christ and the Critics''(1891), in which he portrayed himself as Christ.

Especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, the meaning of ''ecce homo'' motif has been extended to the portrayal of suffering and the degradation of Man through violence and war. Famous modern depictions are: Lovis Corinth 's later work ''Ecce homo''(1925), which shows, from the perspective of the crowd, Jesus, a soldier and Pilate dressed as a physician, and Otto Dix 's ''Ecce homo with self-likeness behind barbed wire'' (1948).


THE USE OF ''ECCE HOMO'' AS A QUOTE


When Napoleon Bonaparte met Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe , he was supposed to have initiated the conversation with the words "Vous êtes un homme" (or "Voilà un homme"). The common interpretation of this exclamation as an ''ecce homo'' paraphrase in the sense of "Look, what a man" seems to be an overstatement; Napoleon could have expressed that simply by saying "Upon meeting you, I have finally met an especially intriguing man."

Alluding to the biblical quote, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche named his Autobiography '' Ecce Homo ''.

As a pun, the phrase also refers to a controversial exhibition in Europe by the Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin in 1998, also named ''Ecce homo'', which linked the phrase with the theme of Homosexuality . The exhibition comprised 12 photographs which depicted Jesus with homosexuals and were based on well-known depictions in the visual arts. The actual ''ecce homo'' motif was not depicted in the photos.