Christ and Woman Taken in Adultery. Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery is a small panel painting in grisaille by the Netherlandish Renaissance printmaker and painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
It is signed and dated 1565. Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is a biblical episode from John 7:53-8:11 where Jesus encounters an adulteress brought before Pharisees and scribes, which has been depicted by many artists.
Such a crime was punishable by death by stoning, however, in the scene, Jesus stoops to write he that is without sin among you, let him first cast the stone at her on the ground before her feet. A number of the unthrown stones lay on the floor to the left of the woman.
Bruegel depicts the woman as one of the few graceful figures in the scene. She is rendered as an idealised form, atypical of Brugel's usual earthy and homely female figures; though the basic layout of the composition is Netherlandish,the austere composition and monumental figures are perhaps the most Italianate in all Bruegel's paintings.
Apart from an even smaller Three Soldiers in the Frick Collection, Bruegel's only other surviving grisaille painting is the Death of the Virgin at Upton House, Warwickshire, which is also an unusually conventional treatment of a religious subject by Bruegel's standards. However, the earliest documented work by Bruegel was grisaille wings for an altarpiece in 1550/51, as he finished his apprenticeship.
It is signed and dated 1565. Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is a biblical episode from John 7:53-8:11 where Jesus encounters an adulteress brought before Pharisees and scribes, which has been depicted by many artists.
Such a crime was punishable by death by stoning, however, in the scene, Jesus stoops to write he that is without sin among you, let him first cast the stone at her on the ground before her feet. A number of the unthrown stones lay on the floor to the left of the woman.
Bruegel depicts the woman as one of the few graceful figures in the scene. She is rendered as an idealised form, atypical of Brugel's usual earthy and homely female figures; though the basic layout of the composition is Netherlandish,the austere composition and monumental figures are perhaps the most Italianate in all Bruegel's paintings.
Apart from an even smaller Three Soldiers in the Frick Collection, Bruegel's only other surviving grisaille painting is the Death of the Virgin at Upton House, Warwickshire, which is also an unusually conventional treatment of a religious subject by Bruegel's standards. However, the earliest documented work by Bruegel was grisaille wings for an altarpiece in 1550/51, as he finished his apprenticeship.
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