Indeed, a great picture! Such masses of color! Carl Hecker, of New York,—an excellent painter himself, and the head of a large school,—pronounces it a masterpiece.
Go to Horticultural Hall and see it! There are over thirty figures in the picture,—just such a group of persons as would naturally be present at the trial of Jesus. There is the shouting fellow, saying "Crucify him!" because the rest do. There is the soldier keeping off the crowd. There is the pitiful mother, holding aloft her child, that he also may see. There is the indifferent observer, who is on hand merely because duty calls him. There is the earnest Highpriest, preferring the accusation. There is the dubious Procurator on the bench.
In the centre is the prisoner. Why arrayed in white? For artistic reasons, it is easy to see why this color is chosen; it lights up the picture, and draws the eye at once to the radiant point. But is it likely that a prisoner, dragged from Gethsemane, to an early morning hearing before the magistrate, would be so robed? There is a suggestion that Jesus was not merely a Nazarene, but a Nazarite (or Nazirite), like John the Baptist and Samson, and that they dressed in white; but Jesus was no ascetic, no Nazarite. On the contrary, he was blamed because, unlike John, he "came eating and drinking." Moreover, scholars find that those abstainers dressed in purple as well as white.
