The Flagellation

Alejo Fernández's Flagellation, now in the Museo del Prado, depicts Christ bound at the column being scourged by his tormentors — one of the most viscerally dramatic subjects in the entire Passion narrative, and a standard component of any comprehensive Passion altarpiece program. Fernández was the leading painter in Seville at the turn of the sixteenth century, and his synthesis of Flemish naturalism with Italian Renaissance figure ideals gave Sevillian painting its distinctive early modern character. The Flagellation as a subject invited painters to explore the tension between Christ's divine transcendence and his human physical suffering, a tension central to the devotional culture of the Iberian church in the period of the Catholic Monarchs. Fernández's version, whatever its precise iconographic form, participates in the rich Andalusian tradition of Passion imagery that prepared the ground for the great Sevillian Baroque.

Fernández employs the Hispano-Flemish technique that characterizes all his work — precise oil rendering of drapery, armor, and facial expression combined with a spatial clarity absorbed from Italian Renaissance sources. Christ's bound figure at the column provides the devotional focus, surrounded by tormentors whose vigorous poses and individualized faces reflect Fernández's Flemish training in dramatic figure characterization.