Ecce Homo (Christ as the Man of Sorrows)

This striking and well-preserved Ecce Homo is a characteristic work by Nikolaos Tzafouris, one of the foremost icon painters active in Candia (modern-day Heraklion) during the period of Venetian rule in Crete. The island’s flourishing artistic milieu fostered a distinctive synthesis of Byzantine tradition and Italian influences, a style that found considerable favour both among local patrons and in the wider Italian market. Typically titled Ecce Homo, or ‘The Man of Sorrows’, the subject is referred to in Orthodox iconography as He Akra Tapeinosis, or ‘The Ultimate Humiliation’. Together with the Latin lettering on the scroll, the inclusion of three nails indicates that the present panel was painted for a Catholic patron; a painting for an Orthodox audience would have shown four, one for each of Christ’s limbs.

We are grateful to Yanni Petsopoulos for proposing the attribution on the basis of photographs, and for his assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.