Christ and the woman taken in adultery, from Pacher to Rubens

Six views of a nameless woman: the adulteress in Renaissance and Baroque painting

The scene from the Gospel of John in which Jesus saves the adulteress from being stoned has been a recurring theme in European painting. From Pacher to Rubens, artists did not merely depict the miracle; they filtered it through their own era and its prejudices.

In Michael Pacher's work (1470, St. Wolfgang Cathedral), Jesus appears pointing to the ground while the woman bows her head. The curious detail: all the figures wear medieval clothing except Jesus. It is a deliberate anachronism: the sacred story happens here and now, not in the Holy Land. Lorenzo Lotto (1527, Louvre) opts for theatre: Jesus makes a gesture of calm, while a priest counts on his fingers — perhaps the accusations — and a soldier grabs the woman by the hair. Gratuitous violence that the era considered justice.

Titian (1520, Vienna) reduces the woman to a lump, an object of debate. The Pharisees hold her like a sack, and Jesus argues with the calm of someone sitting in a café. The background is full of onlookers: the same crowd that will later call for the crucifixion. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565, Courtauld) breaks the mould with a grisaille: Jesus crouched, writing on the ground. The soldiers leave, the crowd disperses. A stone lies useless beside the open-mouthed priest. The violence is left without justification.

By the Baroque era, Guercino (1621, Dulwich Picture Gallery) concentrates the tension in the confrontation between Jesus and the priest. The woman, dressed in white and red (innocence and blood), is held by a young soldier. A boy watches: the one who always looks on without intervening. Rubens (c. 1614, Brussels) turns the scene into a mass spectacle. A Pharisee wears a paper pinned to his hood with Hebrew words, almost a caricature. The woman covers herself with a black veil. Rubens cannot paint intimacy; he needs crowds and grand gestures.

This tour of the six works shows how art has treated the woman as a symbol, an object or a pretext. The stone is never thrown, but the sarracena verdict hangs in the air.