Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers

Édouard Manet · 1865

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

190.8 × 148.3 cm (74 7/8 × 58 3/8 in.); Framed: 240.1 × 196.9 cm (94 1/2 × 77 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Painted on a monumental scale, this work arrests attention with its raw, almost theatrical staging — Christ surrounded by figures whose expressions range from contempt to blank indifference. Manet was never an obvious choice for religious painting, and that tension is exactly what gives this canvas its power. Exhibited at the 1865 Salon alongside the scandalous Olympia, it drew on old master precedents — Titian, Van Dyck, Velázquez — while rendering the scene with the same unflinching directness Manet applied to modern Parisian life. The soldiers wear no period costume; they look like men you might pass on a street, which makes the cruelty feel less historical and more immediate. His brushwork is loose and confident, building form through tone rather than outline. When the painting was shown at the Salon, critics who had savaged Olympia largely overlooked this work, despite its ambition — a strange fate for a canvas nearly two metres tall that now occupies a prominent place in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on quality canvas using the same oil medium Manet used, allowing the characteristic texture, tonal depth, and brushed energy of the original to come through in a way no print can replicate.