Now, four centuries after it was painted, “Ecce Homo” — meaning “Behold the Man” in Latin — is on display for the first time starting Tuesday at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
“Ecce Homo has represented one of the greatest discoveries in the history of art,” the museum said in a statement Monday, highlighting the unprecedented speed with which experts confirmed its authenticity.
There are only about 60 known works of Caravaggio in existence, which gives the painting an “extraordinary value,” it added. “Ecce Homo” is on loan to the museum till mid-October.
“Ecce Homo,” which the museum said was painted by Caravaggio around 1605-09, is in the chiaroscuro style for which the Italian master is renowned, using strong contrasts between light and dark to create luminous scenes. Jesus is at the center of the composition, with vivid drops of blood standing out against his pale skin. Presenting him to the people is the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, while the eyes of the soldier behind Jesus convey the turbulence of the moment.
The 44-by-33-inch painting had been misattributed in the 2021 auction to a pupil of José de Ribera, a prominent Spanish Baroque artist, the Prado Museum said. Spain halted the auction after several art historians and experts pointed out that it was probably the work of Caravaggio.
Art historian Massimo Pulini, a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy, said he immediately identified the work as Caravaggio’s after receiving a photo of the painting from an art dealer in 2021.
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It took him six minutes to compose himself and respond, he wrote in an email. “Identifying a painting by Caravaggio today is equivalent of finding a lost chapter of a Shakespeare comedy,” Pulini said. He added that “the radical spirituality of that painting has not aged at all and speaks to us with a language that is still true today.”
While it is not known for whom the work was created, the museum said it first appeared in the assets of a Neapolitan viceroy and at one point was part of the royal collection of Spain’s King Philip IV.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio led a tumultuous life, with stints in Rome, Naples, Sicily and Malta. In 1606, he fatally wounded a man in Rome, where he had established a name as a prominent artist, and fled to Naples to avoid the death penalty. An enormous Caravaggio canvas depicting the beheading of Saint John the Baptist at the cathedral of Valletta in Malta is described by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as the most commanding of his works following his departure from Rome.
Discoveries of lost works often cause a stir. In January, a Gustav Klimt painting was rediscovered after almost a century in what was hailed as a sensational find. In 2019, a lost painting by pre-Renaissance Italian artist Cimabue was discovered hanging in a kitchen in northern France. It was later sold at auction for $26.6 million, according to the BBC.
