The fresco is enriched with an extra dimension: the thickness: it is in fact engraved, scratched with deep grooves. The clothes are not removed but ripped off by shadowy men. Among them, bend by the effort, a straight, statuary Jesus. Power of the paradox: proudly dignified in the moment of humiliation. Undressing a man, as torturers of all time know, it’s turning him off deeply. On the other hand here it seems that clothes obscure its luminosity and that therefore undressing Jesus is a bit like removing the packaging from a lead beacon! Again the play of light and darkness. It is the visual triumph of the theology of John the Apostle, of the struggle between the Son of light and the children of darkness. “The true light came into the world… yet the world did not recognize it.”

Armando Cattaneo