Jesus is shown in the solitude of the moment when he is condemned to death before the mul- titude at the Praetorium. This painting is a version of the Ecce Homo from the palace of El Pardo, today in the Museo del Prado.

Thanks to infrared reflectography carried out by the Restoration and Preventive Conservation team of our museum, traces of dots left by the technique of stencil, a method of transfer with the aid of pricked contours, have been found beneath the paint layer of the picture. These dots are visible on the structure of the body, especially on the robe over the shoulders, the forearms, the hands and the reed, and are also discernible on the face, particularly the nose.

This provides evidence for the use of a cartoon or pattern, indicating that Morales’s original model was transferred by assistants and that the composition would have been repeated to meet demand, either by the master himself or by other members of the workshop.

Although it is known for certain that Morales used stencil in his production, no example of such a template had been documented thus far (2015) in any painting by him or his circle.

The great popularity of Morales’s paintings of the Ecce Homo is evident from the large number of known versions, whether by the artist himself, workshop pieces or copies.