Art, rediscovered “Ecce homo” by Titian, goes to auction in New York

A late work by Titian (1488-1576), a touchingly and expressively painted «Ecce Homo» has been rediscovered: it will be auctioned on Thursday 26 January in New York at Sotheby’s with an estimate between 1.5 and 2 million dollars .

«Ecce Homo» – not to be confused with the imposing composition of the same name from 1543 by the Venetian artist, kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna – is an unfinished painting with the proto-impressionist flair that characterized Titian’s last period and depicts Christ , crowned with thorns, which is presented to Pontius Pilate. The reappearance of this work, which last appeared at auction, heavily overpainted, in 2019, marks an important addition to Titian’s corpus and especially to his corpus of religious art.

‘Ecce Homo’ will go up for auction following Titian’s ‘Venus and Adonis’ which fetched a record £11.2million last month in London. The recent cleaning of the secular overpaint (which appears to have been applied to hide the then unfashionable ‘unfinished’ of the work) has revealed the exuberant, spontaneous brushwork characteristic of Titian’s later works, in a painting now described by Paul Joannides as “completely autograph”. Both he and Peter Humfrey believe the painting is likely an unfinished composition at the time of Titian’s death in 1576.

The aesthetic of the unfinished gives the image a sense of spontaneity and recent scientific images further reveal the complex and lengthy creative process behind the painting. X-ray images demonstrate that Titian revised the position of Christ’s staff and right arm several times as he perfected his vision of him. Conceived on a large scale, the painting depicts Christ being presented to the people by Pontius Pilate during one of the most touching moments of the Passion. Crowned with thorns, Christ is in the center with a soldier to his right, a composition similar to that of Titian. Titian depicting the same subject in the Saint Louis Art Museum.