Marcus Antokolsky addressed his notion of a moral ideal through the story and image of Jesus Christ. In this particular work, he depicts the moment when Jesus of Nazareth emerges from the palace of Pontius Pilate to face the people. Although Pilate did not find Jesus guilty of any crime meriting death, he succumbed to the clamour of the chief priests and handed the Messiah over to be crucified. The sculptor captures the triumph of the Jesus’s humility and spiritual nobility over the reaction of the crowd.

Antokolsky Mark

Antokolsky, Mark Matveevich
1842, Vilna — 1902, Bad Homburg (Germany)

The sculptor Mark Antokolsky moved to St Petersburg in 1862, where he studied under Nikolai Pimenov and Johann Reymers at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1871 he started work on his sculpture of Ivan the Terrible (plaster, Kensington Museum, London). During the early 1870s he lived in Italy, before moving to France in 1877, although he visited Russia every year. Antokolsky was awarded a gold medal and Légion d’honneur at the Exposition Universelle, Paris in 1878 and was later made a professor, then full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he held solo exhibitions in 1880 and 1893. He was also an honorary member of Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Akademie der Künste in Berlin and Accademia di Belle Arti in Urbino.