In Duccio’s series of the ‘Passion of our Saviour,’ in the Duomo at Siena, he has, in this and in other scenes, represented Judas with regular and not ugly features; but he has a villanous, and at the same time anxious, expression;—he has a bad conscience.
The scene between Judas and the high-priest is also given by Schalken as a candle-light effect, and in the genuine Dutch style.
2. ‘Judas betrays his Master with a kiss.’ This subject will be noticed at large in the Life of Christ. The early Italians, in giving this scene with much dramatic power, never forgot the scriptural dignity required; while the early Germans, in their endeavour to render Judas as odious in physiognomy as in heart, have, in this as in many other instances, rendered the awful and the pathetic merely grotesque. We must infer from Scripture, that Judas, with all his perversity, had a conscience: he would not else have hanged himself. In the physiognomy given to him by the old Germans, there is no trace of this; he is an ugly malignant brute, and nothing more.
3. Rembrandt. ‘Judas throws down the thirty pieces of silver in the Temple, and departs.’[236]
4. ‘The remorse of Judas.’ He is seated and in the act of putting the rope about his neck; beside him is seen the purse and the money, scattered about the ground. The design is by Bloemart, and, from the Latin inscription underneath, appears to be intended as a warning to all unrighteous dealers.
5. ‘Judas hanging on a tree’ is sometimes introduced into the background, in ancient pictures of the Deposition and the Entombment: there is one in the Frankfort Museum.
6. ‘Demons toss the soul of Judas from hand to hand in the manner of a ball:’ in an old French miniature.[237] This is sufficiently grotesque in representation; yet, in the idea, there is a restless, giddy horror which thrills us. At all events, it is better than placing Judas between the jaws of Satan with his legs in the air, as Dante has done, and as Orcagna in his Dantesque fresco has very literally rendered the description of the poet.[238]
Lionardo da Vinci
Giotto
Raphael