This activity goes along with day eight of The Living Christ: An Easter Countdown.
For our activity today we did another art study. I divided the children up into two groups. One group received The Flagellation of our Lord Jesus Christ by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (above), the other group received Behold the Man by Antonio Ciseri (below).
They had to look at the paintings and answer the following questions:
What scene is being depicted?
Look at the expressions on each of the faces. What do you think they are feeling/thinking?
How does this painting make you feel? Why? What do you see in the picture that makes you feel that way?
Just these few questions leads to a big, sometimes, long discussion with your children. The details they see that somehow we miss as adults is amazing. After each group did this we switched pictures and then together as a group we looked at Christ With Thorns by Carl Bloch (below) and discussed it. I personally LOVE this painting and am struck by it every time I see it.
Click on each picture to open a new window with a full resolution of the painting.
Hiya
Thank you for such a good range of pictures on this page.
May i please ask, in the painting called ‘behold this man’, what is actually happening? And who are the people? Are the jewish? Is the woman sad because she wants jesus released? What did he do for him to get to where he was in the picture?
Im thinking of doing a literacy lesson based around this picture and then letting the children hot seat jesus and ask him questions at the end. But i need to know whats actually happening myself within the picture before i do this. Please may you help?
The people you see in the painting are not Jewish but those who belong to Pontius Pilate’s court. Pontius Pilate was the Roman leader at the time in Jerusalem. Only he could give the order to crucify Jesus. In this picture Pilate is the one in the middle pointing to Jesus. He is telling the crowd that he finds no fault with Jesus. He asks the crowd {who are Jews, more specifically Scribes and Pharisees, the leaders of the Jews} what they want him to do with Jesus. The crowd replies, “Crucify Him!”
The woman who looks sad is supposed to be Pilate’s wife. She had a dream about Jesus and knew him to be a just man. She sent word to her husband while he sat in judgement of Jesus asking Pilate not to do anything to him.