The Mocking of Christ

This Mocking of Christ by Lippo di Benivieni, a Florentine painter active in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, depicts the Passion scene in which soldiers blindfold and strike Christ. Working in the generation between Cimabue and Giotto, Lippo di Benivieni represents the transitional moment when Florentine painting began moving from Byzantine conventions toward greater naturalism. The subject was a standard element in Passion cycles displayed in Franciscan and Dominican churches.

Executed in egg tempera on panel with gold ground, the painting shows the artist's debt to the Cimabue workshop tradition in its figural types and spatial arrangement. The composition relies on emphatic gestures and crowded figures to convey narrative drama, with limited spatial depth.