Kiss of Judas  

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According to the Synoptic Gospels, Judas identified Jesus to the soldiers by means of a kiss. This is the kiss of Judas, also known (especially in art) as the Betrayal of Christ, which occurs in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper, and leads directly to the arrest of Jesus by the police force of the Sanhedrin (Kilgallen 271). In Christian theology, the events from the Last Supper until the death and resurrection of Jesus are referred to as The Passion.

In art

The scene is nearly always included, either as the Kiss itself, or the moment after, in the Arrest of Jesus, or the two combined (as above), in the cycles of the Life of Christ or Passion of Jesus in various media.

  • Probably the best known is from Giotto's cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.
  • There is also a version called The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio or one of his disciples.<ref> For a discussion of the kiss of Judas with respect to Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ (now in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), together with a summary of traditional ecclesiastical interpretation of that gesture, see Franco Mormando, "Just as your lips approach the lips of your brothers: Judas Iscariot and the Kiss of Betrayal" in Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image, ed. F. Mormando, Chestnut Hill, MA: The McMullen Museum of Art of Boston College, 1999, 179–90.</ref>
  • A sixth-century Byzantine Mosaic in Ravenna.
  • A fresco by Barna da Siena.
  • A sculpture representing the Kiss of Judas appears on the Passion façade of the Sagrada Família.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Kiss of Judas" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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