The Flagellation

(Bartolomeo Manfredi)

If, at first glance The Flagellation appears to be the product of northern Caravaggesque realism, it only goes to show the extent of Bartolomeo Manfredi’s influence, particularly on Valentin. Moir points out that there are times when Valentin comes so close in handling to late  Bartolomeo Manfredi that their work might almost be confused. Yet, the intense depth of expression in the agonised Christ and the strong raking lighting from top left which bathes the naked torsos and the clinging, tightly folded loincloth, all stem from Bartolomeo Manfredi.

The subject of the Flagellation was a favourite Counter-Reformation idiom that embraced the themes of aggression and torment. The iconography, with a dispassionate swarthy tormenter on each side of Christ, dates back to the ninth century. However, Bartolomeo Manfredi has kept the general location and spatial concept deliberately vague in a typically Caravaggesque manner, emphasising the dramatic tension of the helpless protagonist (‘smitten of God and afflicted.’ Isaiah 53.4) and the theatrical lighting.

Bartolomeo Manfredi was probably inspired by Caravaggio’s composition of the same subject (now in Rouen) which is dated c. 1607 but chooses to omit the column to which Christ is bound that generally forms part of the subject’s iconography. But whereas Caravaggio placed Christ left of centre, concentrating attention on the hands that bind Christ to the column, Bartolomeo Manfredi followed the more traditional iconography, concentrating on Christ’s central role and his suffering.
In The Flagellation, both the handling of the paint, the gradations of the raking light and the subtlety of the interaction of the three half-length figures on opposing axis are more delicately observed and of higher quality than is usually the case in Bartolomeo Manfredi’’s work. Mancini commented that Bartolomeo Manfredi painted ‘… nella maniera di Caravaggio, ma con più fine unione e dolcezza… e, veduto il colorito del Caravaggio, si messe ad operar per quella strada, ma con più diligenza e fine, nel qual modo ha fatto progresso tale che adesso le sue opere sono in grandissima stima’. Briganti suggested a close comparison with a work probably executed during the artist’s last years, The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (formerly in a Milanese private collection, fig. 1) which had been published by Longhi. Indeed, so striking is the comparison that it has led Prohaska to tentatively suggest that since their dimensions are almost identical, this painting may have been the pendant to the Saint Bartholomew.

The Matthiesen Gallery,London, 1981;From whom acquired by Fine Art Mutual Inc.;Barbara Piasecka Johnson collection, Princeton.

B.Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 2nd ed. edited by
Luisa Vertova, Turin, 1990, I, p.143. plate 326 as Christ’s Flagellation.