Ivory Polyptych with Scenes from Christ's Passion in the Metropolitan Musem of Art, February 2010

Ivory Polyptych with Scenes from Christ's Passion
Carved in France, about 1350

Accession # 17.190.205

Some private devotional practices were intended to encourage meditation on the events of the Passion in great detail, cultivating a feeling of personal presence. Narrative carvings may have aided in such intense visualization. This particular choice of scenes is striking in its attention to Pontius Pilate, its depiction of both the raising of the cross and Jesus nailed to the cross, and its inclusion of the rare episode of of the stripping and buffeting of Christ.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.