Page 94 - The mystery of faith

PEDRO DE MENA

(Granada 1628 – 1688 Malaga)

7. Ecce Homo

Wood, polychromed and gilded
77.5 x 28 x 40 cm (30 ½ x 11 x 15 ¾ in.)
PROVENANCE: Private Collection, Valencia

Pedro de Mena’s sculpture follows the standard iconography for the subject, Ecce Homo, the
words proclaimed by Pontius Pilate, when he delivered Jesus Christ, together with the thief
Barrabas, for the crowds to choose between for crucifixion. According to the testimony of Saint
John the Evangelist (John 19:5–7), Christ was first scourged and beaten with rods, then
crowned with thorns, draped in a red mantle, and made to hold a cane as a mock sceptre even as he
was forced to wear a rope about his neck as the mark of a prisoner.

The earliest half-length depictions of the subject in sculpture date from about the end of the sixteenth
century when the veneration of Christ’s Passion gained considerable significance as a result of the edicts
of the Council of Trent. In Andalusian sculpture of this period and at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the artists who principally interpreted this iconography and imbued it with their personal
touch were, in Seville, Gaspar Núñez Delgado, and, in Granada, the brothers Jerónimo Francisco and
Miguel Jerónimo García. Initially, most of these half-length sculptures were produced in painted
terracotta, and were commissioned specifically by convents or confraternities devoted to this particular
cult. The subject then enjoyed a second wave of popularity around the middle of the seventeenth
century, when Pedro de Mena, the most important follower of Alonso Cano, formed a wide repertoire
of images including those of the Ecce Homo and the Mater Dolorosa, which became much sought after
in the heat of Baroque splendour and Tridentine devotion. So much so that, as Professor Lázaro Gila
Medina points out, Mena produced these two particular subjects both in single, as well as paired
commisions.1 Other Andalusian Baroque artists, such as Pedro Roldán and his daughter Luisa, La
Roldana, also interpreted these emotive subjects, amongst which are the achingly expressive versions of
Ecce Homo made by Luisa in the Church of Saints Francis and Eulogio, Cordoba, and in the Cathedral
of Cadiz (the latter actually converted in the eighteenth century into a standing full-length sculpture),
and in the church attached to the former women’s prison in Madrid (present location now unknown).

The scant number of works devoted specifically to The Passion, which Pedro de Mena actually
produced for confraternities, does not signify that the artist refused this type of commission, but rather
reflects more on his conviction as to how the subject should be interpreted. That is, if Christ’s corporeal
suffering was the necessary means by which his, and therefore man’s, higher purpose could be achieved,
then the contemplation of his pain and passion should be personal, in close proximity, where the devout
has direct access to the object of veneration, such as in the private chapels of the nobility, hidalgos and
the clergy. We know that Pedro de Mena enjoyed great success in this particular market, first as a

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