ropes, and broken twigs lie upon the ground, and slender streams of blood appear upon the body. A guardian angel behind the figure of the Lord, stands bending slightly over a child kneel- ing with clasped hands, and points to the sufferer, from whose head a ray of light passes to the child’s heart. The angel is a Spanish nursery-maid with wings, and the face of the child is of the lower Spanish type, and is in striking contrast with the exquisite countenance of Murillo’s Christ-child, which hangs next to this picture, and which is of the sweetest type of An- dalusian beauty. The Saviour’s face is of a thoroughly manly, indeed, of a robust type, expressing intense suffering, but with- out contortion. The large, dark eyes are ineffably sad. The strong light on the right arm merges into the deep shadow of the bound hands, and the same shadow falls with startling effect across the full light on the left arm, marked at the wrist by a slight bloody line.
In the portrayal of the crowning with thorns, in a few in- stances, the moment is chosen after the crown has been placed, the action being in the mock-worship; but the prevailing con- ception is that of the act of crowning, which consists in pressing the crown upon the brow by means of two long staves. A magnificent specimen is Luini’s fresco in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. Christ sits upon a tribune, clad in a scarlet robe, His face wearing an expression of infinite sweetness and dignity, while a soldier on either side crowds down the crown with a staff. The Italian artists represent the crown as consisting of pliable twigs with small thorns; but the northern artists “have conceived,” to quote Mrs. Jameson, “an awful structure of the most unbending, knotted boughs, with tremendous spikes half a foot long, which no human hands could have forced into such a form.” In afew later instances the staves are omitted, and the crown is placed on the head by the mailed hand of a soldier.
Put on (aepsgBarov). Lit., threw about. Rev., arrayed.
Purple (sropfupodv). An adjective. Found only here, ver. 5, and Apoc. xviii. 16. Mark uses the noun qoppupa, purple,