Miniature from a Mariegola: The Flagellation (c. 1365–75): Art, History and Details

Miniature from a Mariegola: The Flagellation (c. 1365–75) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lorenzo Veneziano (Italian); Workshop.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This miniature shows a moment of Christ’s Passion. After receiving his death sentence, Jesus was bound to a column, mocked, and tortured. While two fearsome henchmen beat Jesus with rods, he seems to look directly at the viewer and make a connection with them. The leaf comes from a rule book of a Venetian scuole, a mariegola. Scuole were guilds and lay associations mainly for religious purposes but also for trades and crafts. Five of them were associations of flagellants, a radical movement that became particularly popular since the 1350s in the wake of the Black Death. Christ’s physical suffering served as their model for self-chastisement.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature from a Mariegola: The Flagellation
• Date: c. 1365–75
• Creator attribution: Lorenzo Veneziano (Italian); Workshop
• Culture: Italy, Venice
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: tempera and gold on parchment
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.5 x 21 cm (11 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1950.374

A detail from the museum

Although dark in appearance now, the column in the center was originally painted to resemble green marble.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William M. "A Venetian Illuminated Miniature." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 38, no. 10 (1951).
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts. Loan Exhibition, Nov. 25, 1953 - Jan. 9, 1954. 1953.
• Meiss, Millard. "The Case of the Frick Flagellation." The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 19/20 (1956).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.