Gerard ter Borch (II) - Procession of Flagellants - c. 1638

Gerard ter Borch (II) - Procession of flagellants - c. 1638


*

From Herbert's essay:

The "Procession of Flagellants" from the Rotterdam Museum Boymans van Beuningen I took without hesitation to be an error of an absentminded curator who hung a Spaniard among the Dutch. The "Procession" is a scene of violent, sharp contrasts of chiaroscuro. The atmosphere of menace and mysteriousness oscillates between a rending shout and deadly silence. Light falls from the lit torches, creating puddles of brightness amid thick, almost fleshlike darkness. On the left, something like an altar or a tribune. In the center, three exorcists in white frocks and white conical hoods recall predatory animals in an atlas of nightmarish hallucinations. We also see a man tied to a fence or wall with stretched-out arms, bare to his waist, on whom a storm of whiplashes will fall in a moment.