Flemish school; second third of the XVII century.

Flemish school; second third of the seventeenth century.
"The scorn of Christ".
Oil on copper.
It presents restorations and xylophages.
Measurements: 23 x 31.5 cm; 31 x 39 cm (frame).
The theme of the mockery of Christ by several Roman soldiers and executioners, narrated in the New Testament (in the gospels of Matthew and Mark), had great diffusion in the arts. This oil painting on copper depicts the mockery of Christ, the episode prior to the Crucifixion, belonging to the cycle of the Passion, in which Christ is mocked by the servants of the high priest. Jesus appears seated, serene and with a gesture of acceptance, without resistance, surrounded by a large group of characters who mock him.
While in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the demand for religious art for churches radically ceased in the northern provinces, today's Holland, in Flanders instead flourished a monumental art in the service of the Catholic Church, partly due to the necessary restoration of the ravages that the wars had caused in churches and convents. In the field of secular art, Flemish painters worked for the court in Brussels and also for the other courts of Europe, producing a painting with classical, mythological and historical themes that was to decorate brilliantly the Royal Sites of Spain, France and England. Thus, there was a proliferation of works of medium and small format, with different themes perfectly framed in a wide range of genres, treated by specialized painters who often collaborated on the same work. In this canvas, on the other hand, we can appreciate the formal novelties but not the thematic or compositional ones, since the formula of the intimate and sober religious painting of the previous century is maintained.