Artist/Maker: 

Origin/Purchase: Paris

Materials: oil on wood

Dimensions: 95.3 × 71.1 (37 1/2 × 28 inches)

Location: Entrance Hall

Provenance: Thomas Jefferson; by purchase to an unidentified buyer at the Harding Gallery sale in 1833; by gift from Louis Durr to the New York Historical Society in 1882; by purchase to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1996

Accession Number: 1947-5

Historical Notes: Thomas Jefferson acquired this copy while he was in France, as it appeared on a brief list of his collection that he prepared in 1789. At that time he identified it as an "original Malbodius." In his later Catalogue of Paintings Jefferson described this work as:

Jesus in the Praetorium, stripped of the purple, as yet naked, & with the crown of thorns on his head. he is sitting. a whole length figure of about 4. feet. the persons present seem to be one of his revilers, one of his followers, & the superintendent of the execution. the subject from Mark 15:16-20. an original on wood, by M[albo]dius.[1]

- Text from Stein, Worlds, 146

References

  1. ^ Jefferson's Catalogue of PaintingsThe Thomas Jefferson Papers, Accession #2958-b, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. For a transcription of Jefferson's catalogue, see Seymour Howard, "Thomas Jefferson's Art Gallery for Monticello," The Art Bulletin 59, no. 4 (1977): 583-600.