, Depictions of
Western Christianity in the Middle Ages, e.g. the
Egbert Codex and the
Codex Aureus Epternacensis, seem to depict the
ecce homo scene (and are usually interpreted as such), but more often than not only show the
Crowning of thorns and the
Mocking of Christ, which precede the actual
ecce homo scene in the Bible. The independent image only developed around 1400, probably in Burgundy, but then rapidly became extremely popular, especially in Northern Europe. '', .
Aelbrecht Bouts The motif found increasing currency as the
Passion became a central theme in Western piety in the 15th and 16th centuries. The
ecce homo theme was included not only in the
passion plays of
medieval theatre, but also in cycles of illustrations of the story of the Passion, as in the
Great Passion of
Albrecht Dürer or the
engravings 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 (e.g. by
Hieronymus Bosch or
Hans Holbein). Like the passion plays, the visual depictions of the
ecce homo scene, it has been argued, often, and increasingly, portray the people of Jerusalem in a highly critical light, bordering perhaps on
antisemitic caricatures. Equally, this style of art has been read as a kind of simplistic externalisation of the inner hatred of the angry crowd towards Jesus, not necessarily implying any racial judgment. The motif of the lone figure of a suffering Christ who seems to be staring directly at the observer, enabling him/her to personally identify with the events of the Passion, arose in the late Middle Ages. At the same time similar motifs of the
Man of Sorrow and
Christ at rest increased in importance. The subject was used repeatedly in later so-called
old master prints (e.g. by
Jacques Callot and
Rembrandt), in the paintings of the
Renaissance and the
Baroque, as well as in Baroque sculptures. Hieronymus Bosch painted
his first Ecce Homo during the 1470s. He returned to the subject in 1490 to paint in a characteristically Netherlandish style, with deep perspective and a surreal ghostly image of praying monks in the lower left-hand corner. In 1498, Albrecht Dürer depicted the suffering of Christ in the
ecce homo of his
Great Passion in unusually close relation with his self-portrait, leading to a reinterpretation of the motif as a metaphor for the suffering of the artist.
James Ensor used the
ecce homo motif in his ironic painting
Christ and the Critics (1891), in which he portrayed himself as Christ.
Antonio Ciseri's 1871
Ecce Homo portrayal presents a semi-photographic view of a balcony seen from behind the central figures of a scourged Christ and Pilate (whose face is not visible). The crowd forms a distant mass, almost without individuality, and much of the detailed focus is on the normally secondary figures of Pilate's aides, guards, secretary and wife. , 1896 One of the more famous modern versions of the ecce homo motif was that by the Polish artist
Adam Chmielowski, who went on to found, as Brother Albert, the
Albertine Brothers () and, a year later, the
Albertine Sisters (), eventually becoming proclaimed a saint on 12 November 1989 by Pope
John Paul II, the author of '''', a play about Chmielowski, written between 1944 and 1950, when the future Pontiff and later himself a saint was a young priest. (146 cm x 96.5 cm, unsigned, painted between 1879 and 1881), was significant in Chmielowski's life, as it is in
Act 1 of Wojtyła's play. Pope John Paul II is said to have kept a copy of this painting in his apartment at the Vatican. The original can be viewed in the Ecce Homo Sanctuary of the Albertine Sisters in Kraków. It was painted at a time when the painter was going through an inner struggle, trying to decide whether to remain an artist, or to give up painting to pursue the calling to minister to the poor. 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 humans through violence and war. Notable 20th-century depictions are
George Grosz's (1922–1923) and
Lovis Corinth's
Ecce Homo (1925). The 84
drawings and 16
watercolors of Grosz criticize the socio-political conditions of the
Weimar Republic. Corinth shows, from the perspective of the crowd, Jesus, a soldier, and Pilate dressed as a physician. Following the
Holocaust of
World War II,
Otto Dix portrayed himself, in
Ecce Homo with self-likeness behind barbed wire (1948), as the suffering Christ in a concentration camp. == Artworks ==