Schiavone was highly valued by Stuart collectors as a Venetian Mannerist working in the tradition of Bellini, Giorgione and Titian. His popularity has diminished over time, but the monograph exhibition at Venice's Museo Correr in 2016 is part of a wider attempt reinstate the artist's prior distinction. 

The eight figures at three-quarter length fill the painting, the soldier turning away from us on the right is cropped by the right edge. The scene is set at night or in a dark interior and the priest and other figures crowded behind Christ are in shadow while a strong source of light from the left side illuminates Pilate’s right side, his hands being washed and Christ’s face and bound wrists. The tight grouping of large figures in a small space and the theatrical lighting in such a dark setting give the scene a drama and menace which opposes the soldiers and Pilate’s face in shadow with the passive figure of Christ and his quiet downcast gaze. Schiavone’s technique with a broad brush loaded with paint visible despite the flattening of some areas by a previous relining, adds a forcefulness to the confrontation. In contrast to the broad painterly approach are touches and highlights such as the delicate white hairs in Pilate’s beard or the precise modelling of his eye and wrinkled skin.

There are at least three other versions of this subject by Schiavone : Venice, Accademia 321 (canvas 104 x 170 cm) dated by Richardson c. 1550-3 (no.291); Stockholm, Nationalmuseum 5197 (canvas, 126 x 194 cm) dated by Richardson c. 1552-6 (no.288); Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 146 (canvas, 82 x 113 cm) dated by Richardson c.1558-62 (no. 315).

Schiavone was looking back at the work of his Venetian predecessors such as Giorgione for the half-length horizontal narrative and earlier work by Titian. Titian’s horizontal composition Christ and the Adultress (Kunsthistorisches Vienna c.1511) has the same sense of a charged encounter with the man on the far right cropped by the painting’s edge. Titian’s Tribute Money c.1516 (Dresden, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie) and the later Tribute Money 1568 (National Gallery, London) have a similar close-up focus on a confrontation between two figures. Titian must have inspired the grandeur of Schiavone’s figures. In the Royal Collection painting Christ, as in every painting in this group of Schiavone paintings, has the nobility, the heroic physique and bound wrists of Titian’s Christ in the Ecce Homo, Madrid, Prado c.1546 or his later Ecce Homo Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland c.1560.

Ridolfi describes this painting as in the collection of Jan Reynst (1601-1646), though he does not specify if the painting was still in Venice or had been moved to Amsterdam. Jan formed the collection in Venice and when Gerard (1599-1658) inherited his brother’s collection in 1646 he had it moved to Amsterdam. In 1660, the States of Holland and West Friesland purchased twenty-four paintings from the collection of Gerard Reynst to present to Charles II as the ‘Dutch gift’. This painting and the Judgement of Midas (cat. no. xx) were included in the gift while six other paintings by Schiavone are recorded in the Reynst collection.