The Flagellation of Christ

Lluís Borrassà was the leading painter in Catalonia in the first two decades of the fifteenth century, whose workshop dominated the Barcelona altarpiece market. His Flagellation of Christ, dated around 1420, belongs to his mature period when he was producing large multi-panel altarpieces for churches across Catalonia and Aragon. The Flagellation — Christ bound to a column and beaten by soldiers — was among the most emotionally intense Passion subjects, and Borrassà's Catalan-International Gothic treatment brings considerable force to the depiction of physical suffering, the soldiers' violent action contrasting with Christ's suffering dignity.

Borrassà renders the soldiers' violent gestures with the active line and clear color of the International Gothic style he helped establish in Catalonia, the diagonal movement of the whip arms creating kinetic energy within the formal panel structure. Christ's body at the column is rendered with an attention to suffering physical form that reflects both theological emphasis on the Passion and the general European move toward naturalism.