Judas Iscariot

Judas Iscariot, painted around 1805 and now in the Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, is an early character study in moral corruption — a physiognomic exercise in which the betrayer of Christ serves as a model for the expression of guilt, treachery, and despair. The tradition of expressive heads depicting morally extreme characters — saints, villains, madmen, martyrs — stretched back through Reynolds to the Italian tradition of 'testa di espressione' and ultimately to the academic study of the passions as a legitimate subject of painterly analysis. Etty's Judas belongs to the same tradition as his companion character studies, the moral extreme providing a challenge of emotional expression that the more neutral academic nude did not present. The Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust holds multiple Etty works within a city collection that reflects South Yorkshire's industrial wealth and Victorian cultural investment. The subject of Judas — whose betrayal was simultaneously the cause and the predicted condition of salvation — offered Etty a meditation on guilt that was both theological and painterly.

Etty models the face with dramatic chiaroscuro, using deep shadows to suggest the moral darkness of the subject. The flesh tones are notably cooler and more sallow than in his idealized figures, conveying corruption through color. His brushwork is vigorous and somewhat rough, appropriate to the turbulent character portrayed.