Triptych with Ecce Homo

In the centre panel of this substantial triptych a tortured Christ stands between the Roman governor Pontius Pilate (right) and two executioners. Jesus was accused of blasphemy. Pilate presents the tortured but, according to Pilate, innocent prisoner to a group of Jews with the words, ‘Behold the man’ (in Latin ‘Ecce homo’). High priests and their followers demand crucifixion. Eventually Pilate gives way to them. Van Heemskerck leaves out the Jews: the viewers are thus confronted more directly with Jesus’s suffering and as it were themselves form the crowd. The side panels depict the donors, with their patron saints Christopher (left) and Martha (right).
The triptych belongs with Heemskerck’s triptych ‘The Entombment’ (now in Brussels): they originally hung together in a Delft church or monastery. These passion retables may have been donated by people who survived the plague epidemic that ravaged Delft in 1557-58. Research on the occasion of the restoration of the triptych in in 1996-97 revealed that there was originally much more blood on Christ’s body.