The series opens with “Christ before Caiaphas” (Pl. 46 (1)).[335] The high priest is seen from the side, seated upon a throne raised on steps within a richly-decorated hall, through the entrance to which the soldiers escorting Christ are crowding. Christ stands below his judge, his hands bound, and his sorrowful face turned towards one of the soldiers, who, with uplifted fist, is about to strike him. The second scene, that of the “Scourging” (Pl. 46 (2)),[336] is enacted in another part of the same building, showing the same low, flattened arches, and a corresponding pillar on the right with Renaissance carving in flat relief and inlaid marble. Christ, his head drooping on his shoulder, an almost nude figure, is bound to a broad circular column with a decorated top. In the action of the three soldiers who are plying their whips and scourges there is little of that exaggerated vehemence of action which is to be seen in Holbein’s earlier versions of this subject, while in both this and the succeeding pictures the type of face is less repulsive, and greater reticence is shown in the display of brutality. In most cases the faces of the soldiers are turned away from the spectator, or half hidden by their action, or only seen in profile. The distortion and caricature have disappeared, and his types have become natural ones, taken from the daily life around him. The costume in few instances only is that of Holbein’s time, and the soldiers wear what is intended to be the antique Roman dress, such as had become familiar to him through Mantegna’s designs. Near Christ, in “The Scourging,” a little behind the central group, stands a bearded man in the gown and hood of a monk, resting on a stick, as though superintending the punishment, and waiting for a confession; and in the background a gallery runs across the building under the arches, from which a second hooded figure is looking down on the scene.