Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Luca Giordano, 1653
etching, h 360mm × w 501mm More details
Hypocritically, Pharisees ask Christ’s opinion of an adulterous woman. He writes his answer on the floor: ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.’ Giordano drew their anguished faces with great empathy. Because of his delicate technique, the nuances are only visible in the earliest impressions, when they were still crisply etched in the plate. Etching was a new medium for the young artist.
