The Slaughter of the Innocents

Central Italian, 1376
Tempera on wood
Musei Capitolini, Rome

The artist has chosen a number of devices to magnify the horror of the massacre. He places Herod and some courtiers in a balcony high above the massacre, rather than on the traditional throne.

In the crowded and chaotic scene below, the boys are killed each in a different manner: stabbed in the throat, sliced in the neck, and most prominently pierced in the behind. In the foreground the mothers mourn, each in her own way. Below the loggia the man in red presses his hand to his cheek, a conventional signifier of contemplation, while the man in green appears to be in prayer, raising his eyes and folding his hands.

This is one of a group of paintings of the infancy of Christ by the same artist.

Read more about the Slaughter of the Innocents

Photographed at the Musei Capitolini by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.