Procession of Flagellants

Ter Borch's Procession of Flagellants from around 1640 documents a Catholic penitential practice that the Dutch Protestant painter may have witnessed during his travels in Spain, Italy, or the Catholic southern Netherlands. Self-flagellation processions—in which penitents publicly beat themselves during Holy Week—were a spectacle of Catholic devotion that fascinated Protestant northern European travelers as an exotic and extreme form of religious practice. Ter Borch's documentation of the subject reflects the same curiosity about foreign manners that made his travels to England, Italy, and Spain productive, and demonstrates his ability to serve as a visual witness to practices that Dutch Calvinist culture had rejected. The painting belongs to his early career period before his definitive establishment as a Dutch interior painter.

The processional composition arranges the hooded flagellants in a rhythmic sequence that conveys both the orderliness of ritual and the violence of self-mortification. Ter Borch's precise rendering of the white robes and the urban setting creates a vivid documentary quality.