3-035-458 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Christ Cleansing the Temple, about 1655. The New Testament relates an occasion when, upon visiting the Temple of Jerusalem during Passover, Jesus found it filled with livestock and turned into a marketplace by merchants and money changers. Furious that the sacred place had become a 'den of thieves', Christ fashioned a whip out of cords, and drove them from the temple, overturning tables as he went. In this animated composition, the diagonal thrust of Christ's movement through the crowd, and the monumental figures reeling in his wake, Bernardino Mei convincingly conveys Christ's righteous anger.