The derision of Christ is an episode of the Passion cycle that in certain pictorial representations includes, in its diversified iconographic codification, characters who perform a burlesque dance. It is a type of iconographic paradigm that enjoys a notable diffusion in some pictorial cycles, limited at different points of the Byzantine East between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries.

However, none of the evangelical sources that nourish the representation of this scene mention the presence of dancers or musicians who, in certain iconographic formulations of this episode, accompany them in the execution of the mockery. However, there are two passages in the Gospels that have influenced, in different ways, the iconographic codification of some elements present in the scenes of Christ's derision.

The first of these passages (narrated by Matthew 26:67; Mark 14:65; Luke 22:63) is located after Christ's arrest in Jerusalem or, depending on the Gospel, at the moment immediately preceding or following his appearance before Caiaphas. It is in these moments when a group of Jews direct a whole series of offenses and violent acts towards Christ: they spit on him, cover his face, and beat him. The second passage, identified with the episode of the Crowning with Thorns (narrated by Matthew, 27: 27-31; Mark, 15: 16-20; John 19: 2-3) is one of the last moments of the process of Christ and takes place inside the palace of Pontius Pilate. On this occasion, in the derision, the Roman soldiers gain a greater role; they dress Christ in a tunic (purple or scarlet, depending on the versions); place a crown of thorns on him, beat him, and spit on him, or else they kneel at his feet, paying a mocking homage to him as king of the Jews.

Chronologically, one of the first Byzantine pictorial manifestations relating to the scorn of Christ to include the figure of the dancer in its iconographic form, is found in two miniatures of Armenian origin from the 11th century, present in a manuscript now preserved in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Ms. Plut 6.23, ff. 58 r, 160r). In these there are two representations of two different moments of the Passion: Christ carrying the Sanhedrin (fig. 1) and Christ led out of Pilate's palace (fig. 2). In both cases, the groups of figures are dynamically represented in the act of walking - as if it were a procession - led by a dancer represented in the moment of executing a choreographic gesture, which is particularly accentuated by the excessive length of his arms. . In one of the miniatures, this length is exaggerated by the type of tunic the dancer is wearing, which makes the sleeves - excessively long and protruding at the wrists - give more dynamism to the burlesque dance he is performing.  

A dancer characterized in a similar way, for example, is also represented in a scene of the derision of Christ present in an icon preserved in the Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai (fig. 3). Even so, the structure of the scene differs remarkably from the previous examples, since in this case it is a static scene, where Christ is placed in the central axis of the composition and the characters who perform the act of derision.

This second type of iconographic scheme, where Christ is represented in a frontal, static way and dressed in a reddish tunic, is the model that will be developed and enriched - with different variants - in the parietal paintings of the Eastern churches during the 13th and 14th centuries with the inclusion of a varied repertoire of musicians (who play wind, string and percussion instruments), of groups of civilians or soldiers (who pay a burlesque homage to Christ, or beat him), as well as with the introduction, frequently to the feet of Christ, of acrobats performing a somersault. Among the preserved copies of scenes of Christ's derision with the presence of dancers, the representation made between 1317 and 1318 by the painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of San Jorge in Staro Nagoričane (Macedonia). At Christ's feet, up to three dancers perform burlesque movements, with two of them wearing a long-sleeved tunic.(fig. 4).

The choreographic exaggeration that allows the movement of the sleeves that protrude from the wrists of the dancers in these representations at the same time may have its origins in secular ceremonies of the Eastern tradition (from China or Persia), where the long sleeve dresses were the characteristic clothing of the dancers. Furthermore, in Byzantium, the sound of instruments was commonly used as torture to punish certain criminals. All of these secular elements, which are missing from evangelical texts, would have migrated from the secular dimension to these pictorial productions, establishing themselves as an iconographic paradigm in the Byzantine area from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.  

This iconographic context would have been based on a more complex reflection that allows relocating the figurative origin of the Passion panel, a work destined for the convent of Santa Clara de Ciutat de Mallorca (today conserved in the diocesan museum of the city) and that historiography has generally attempted to lead back to central Italy of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It is a large horizontal altarpiece consisting of twenty-four scenes divided into four rows, three of the eighteen scenes correspond to a cycle of the Passion of Christ. One of these is a mockery of Christ (fig. 5) that fully adheres to the Byzantine iconographic paradigm, since there are three musicians (who play a harp-zither, a horn and a pair of cymbals), an acrobat who plays a backflip and a kneeling dancer performing burlesque movements with his arms, prolonged through excessively long sleeves. The presence of this iconography (a unicum in Western art), its marked Byzantinism, as well as the impossibility of matching it stylistically and unequivocally with an Italian maestranza, would have to allow reorienting the approach of historiography to the table and raising the possibility that it be a work created by Byzantine artists, perhaps itinerant ones.

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