Title:
Ecce Homo (Behold the Man)
Creator/Contributor:
Artist unknown (artist)
Date:
undated
Identifier:
1957.1
Format:
wool tapestry
This remarkable tapestry retraces all the episodes of the Passion-the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper
and his death.
The title of the work comes from the Latin version of the Gospel of St. John (XIX, 5): "Then came Jesus forth, wearing the
crown of thorns and the purple robe; Pilate saith unto them: Behold the man." Christ's presentation to the people forms the
central episode of the tapestry.
The tapestry itself has an important lineage. It was commissioned as part of a cycle for the chapel and organ room at Knole,
the extraordinary house built in 1457 by the then-Archbishop of Canterbury in Kent, England. As archbishop, Thomas Cranmer
surrendered the house and its contents to the British crown in 1537. Elizabeth I then made a gift of it to Thomas Sackville,
in whose family the tapestry remained until it was purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1911. Morgan sold the tapestry to William
Randolph Hearst in 1923, whose family ultimately donated it to the Berkeley campus.