Pilate Washing His Hands, from Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi (c. 1503): Artwork and History

Pilate Washing His Hands, from Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi (c. 1503) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Urs Graf, the Elder (Swiss, 1485-1527/28) published by Johann Knobloch (German, born Switzerland, died 1528).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The Roman official Pontius Pilate is seen here washing his hands before a crowd, having failed to convince Christ to defend himself. With this action, Pilate claimed to rid himself of the blood of an innocent man, and thus hoped to absolve himself from all responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ.

Object facts

• Title: Pilate Washing His Hands, from Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi
• Date: c. 1503
• Artist attribution: Urs Graf, the Elder (Swiss, 1485-1527/28) published by Johann Knobloch (German, born Switzerland, died 1528)
• Place of origin: Switzerland
• Medium: Hand-colored woodcut on ivory laid paper with letterpress on verso, laid down on white laid paper
• Dimensions: 21.7 × 15.6 cm (8 9/16 × 6 3/16 in.)
• Type: Print
• Department: Prints and Drawings
• Reference number: 1932.1216

Collection credit

Gift of Frederick Keppel & Co, New York. From E. W. collection Gift of Los Angeles Junior Museum to Children's Museum Given to Chicago Community July 1951.

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.