Preti, "Pilate Washing His Hands"

Pilate looks directly at the viewer with a “Who you lookin’ at?” expression. The composition uses the frame in the Baroque way: on the lower right, a servant with a pitcher leans into the frame, while an old soldier leans out of it. Light/dark contrasts carry the irony of the painting: Light shines on Pilate’s well-scrubbed brow and makes the whole washing easily visible, while at his feet (sub plataforma, stans in plateam) Christ is in shadowy darkness with the soldiers who are already grabbing him to take him away to the cross.

Mattia Preti (Italian, Neapolitan, 1613–1699)
Oil on canvas; 81 1/8 x 72 3/4 in. (206.1 x 184.8 cm)
Purchase, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan and Bequest of Helena W. Charlton, by exchange, Gwynne Andrews, Marquand, Rogers, Victor Wilbour Memorial, and The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Funds, and funds given or bequeathed by friends of the Museum, 1978 (1978.402)

The painting illustrates Matthew 27:24–26: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this righteous person. See ye to it.'" The picture is mentioned in two letters addressed by Preti to the Sicilian collector Don Antonio Ruffo in 1663. Preti moved to Malta in 1661 to decorate the vault of the church of San Giovanni, Valetta, and the following year he finished for Ruffo a companion to Rembrandt's "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer," now in this museum. In the present painting, the type of feigned architectural frame is similar to those used in the San Giovanni decorations, but the directed light and psychological concentration seem to derive from the "Aristotle," which Preti probably knew from a drawing. The picture was not purchased by Ruffo but may have been owned by the Rospigliosi family in Rome.

Mattia Preti Pilate Washing His Hands

Mattia Preti
Pilate Washing His Hands