Crowning with Thorns

Crowning with Thorns
Artist: Titian
Oil painting on canvas; Size: 280x182 cm; Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Some thirty years after the religion painting Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Louvre, Titian again tackled the theme of the Crowning with Thorns. The composition presents no noteworthy differences as far as Christ and the figures around him are concerned. However, the bust of Tiberius at top right has disappeared, replaced by a large skylight that radiates a shimmering and immanent light and helps to dramatically dematerialize the personages represented: the glimmering reflections fall on the bodies and clothing, producing surprising effects of immateriality on the cloth next to Christ's feet. It is a painting made up of luminous filaments in which the color, powdery and inconsistent, seems to congeal, by now serving no descriptive function and used exclusively to convey the emotional tension. This was to become a typical feature of the last decade of Titian's activity.