Mocking of Christ
Anthony van Dyck
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The Story
Book • Books
Created in 1677 during the Baroque period, this work belongs firmly within the power & politics tradition. Francis Sandford worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.
The physical object — Illustrations: etching and engraving, 14 5/8 × 9 9/16 × 2 1/16 in. (37.2 × 24.3 × 5.3 cm) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Francis Sandford's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Baroque studio practice.
Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Scale and setting do political work here, elevating the subject above the room it would have hung in.
Housed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the painting has passed through the hands of collectors, dealers, and institutions before reaching public view — a provenance that is itself part of the object's story.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
