The Mocking of Christ 

Curator: Ugh. The texture makes my skin crawl. Editor: Here we have "The Mocking of Christ" attributed to Jusepe de Ribera, realized in oil paint. Notice how Ribera captures a raw, brutal intimacy with the Passion of Christ. Curator: Raw, brutal, exactly. The colors feel sickly, somehow. Like jaundice in paint form. And the expressions! That soldier sticking his tongue out—such crude glee. Makes you wonder what sort of power dynamic Ribera's pointing toward here. Is it mockery or just… pure human ugliness on display? Editor: I appreciate you focusing on the raw affect. As a Baroque history painting, the work offers space to think about social transgression and power imbalances. How is the performance of masculinity staged? How are lines between the powerful and powerless drawn, but also challenged? Christ's silent suffering against their active taunts—the theatrical red drape emphasizing his vulnerability... It evokes uncomfortable questions around human nature, yes, but also divine sovereignty against oppressive social order. Curator: Right! And it’s not like Ribera’s just making a Sunday school picture here. It's violent, intentionally so. He's really leaning into the theatricality and making us feel it too, I suppose. Baroque paintings usually don’t quite hit me like this; this is way too honest and unflinching for its time. I mean look at Christ's eyes--what story are they telling about defiance and resilience in the face of such cruel humanity. Editor: True! There’s a discomforting beauty in its realism that bypasses easy aesthetic categorization, one that might disrupt neat interpretations, encouraging us to meditate not only on suffering but the very construction and deconstruction of meaning within fraught historical contexts. Curator: Yes, its more human than divine isn't it. I keep coming back to the individual faces—so real, so flawed. Each of them caught in their own little drama, utterly removed from empathy. The piece definitely sticks with you. Maybe because you recognize the same twisted pleasure in cruelty within ourselves. A reminder of humanity's capability for darkness I suppose. Editor: Absolutely. And that darkness, refracted through historical events, pushes us to critically examine echoes that continue to resonate across historical time.