The Flagellation, with paved floor

This powerful engraving depicts the tortured Christ as vulnerable and afraid, recoiling as his tormentors scourge him. One of the first Italian artists to embrace printmaking, Andrea Mantegna was attracted to its potential for creating original compositions that could disseminate his work to a wider audience. A surviving preparatory drawing for the figure of Christ, also in The Courtauld's collection, demonstrates that he devised the composition himself. As was customary, one or more members of his workshop then executed the engraving. For unknown reasons, however, the print was never finished. The sculptural quality of the bodies is achieved by modelling them with light and shade, using a range of parallel lines. Mantegna's appraoch to the human figure influenced other artists long after his death; this impression of the print was once owned by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), whose art was deeply indebted to Mantegna.