Documented in connection with the Borghese Collection beginning in 1693, this painting represents Christ with his hands tied while he looks toward the observer with an air of profound suffering. This kind of subject is frequently entitled Ecce Homo, which according the Gospels were the words uttered by Pontius Pilate after he showed Jesus’s flogged body to the Jews.
This panel shows similarities to works with the same subject by Sebastiano del Piombo. According to critics, it is the product of an anonymous artist familiar with the expressive and figurative models of the Spanish painter Luis de Morales.
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room IV, no. 31; Della Pegola 1959); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 35. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
1906 - Luigi Bartolucci;
1953 - Gilda Diotallevi;
1953 - Alvaro Esposti, Mauro Manca.
Commentary
The provenance of this painting remains unknown. According to Paola Della Pergola (1959), it is likely that it once belonged to Olimpia Aldobrandini’s collection, of which parts were integrated into the Borghese holdings, including several works depicting this subject.
The first certain mention of the panel dates to 1693, when it appears in the inventory of the city palace as “a panel painting measuring approximately 3 palms, depicting an Ecce Homo with hands bound with a rope, no. 493, in a gilded frame. Uncertain”. In 1833, it was listed in the fideicommissari inventory as belonging to the school of Paolo Veronese, an attribution that was subsequently supported by Giovanni Piancastelli (1891), although he mistakenly described the work as a canvas. This perspective was revised by Adolfo Venturi (1893), who upheld the reference to the Venetian school while proposing that it was “a copy, perhaps after an original by Sebastiano del Piombo”.
Other scholars (Della Pergola 1959; Herrmann Fiore 2006) echoed Venturi’s view. Roberto Longhi, in particular, described the painting in 1928 as “a weak, insignificant derivation from Sebastiano”.
In 1959, Paola Della Pergola proposed a new attribution, publishing the panel as “in the manner of Luis de Morales.” She identified in it stylistic features characteristic of the Spanish painter, such as the “mysticism of expression” and the “silvery light that permeates the colour”.
Antonio Iommelli
September 2022 (last updated on December 2025)
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Bibliography
G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 58;
G. Cantalamessa, Note manoscritte al Catalogo di A. Venturi del 1893, Arch. Gall. Borghese, 1911-1912, n. 179;
R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 195;
P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, pp. 177-178, n. 262;
K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 63.
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