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Ecce Homo (IPA: /'ɛttse 'homo/ or /'ɛkːe 'homo/;), are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John (19:5), when he presented a scourged Jesus Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. The original Greek is ιδου ο ανθρωπος (Idou ho Anthrôpos). The King James Version translates the phrase into English as Behold the Man.

The scene is a very popular motif in Christian art, and Ecce Homo can refer to any artistic work that depicts Jesus wearing the crown of thorns.

An ecce homo can refer to either:

• the actual illustration of the scene from John 19 (also called the scourging of Christ) which depicts at least Pilate and Christ himself, as well as the mocking crowd and parts of the city of Jerusalem.

• devotional pictures with Jesus as a lone, standing half or full figure with a purple robe, loincloth, crown of thorns and torture wounds, especially on his head. If the wounds of the crucifixion are also depicted (Nail wounds on the limbs, spear wounds on the sides), it can also be termed a Man of Sorrow(s) (also Misericordia). If Christ is sitting down (usually supporting himself with his hand on his thigh), it may be referred to it as Christ at rest. But these depictions fall under the broader thematic category of ecce homo.

The first depictions of the ecce homo scene in the fine arts appear in the 9th and 10th centuries in Syrian-byzantine culture. Western depictions in the Middle Ages that often seem to depict the ecce homo scene, (and are usually interpreted as such) more often than not only show the crowning of thorns and the mocking of Christ, (cf. the Egbert Codex and the Codex aureus Epternacensis) which precede the actual ecce homo scene in the Bible.

The motif found increasing currency as the Passion became a central theme in Western piety in the 15th and 16th centuries. The ecce homo theme was included not only in the passion plays of Middle Ages theatre, but also in scenic illustrations of the story of the Passion, as in the Passions of Albrecht Dürer or the prints of Martin Schongauer. The scene was (especially in France) often depicted as a sculpture or group of sculptures; even altarpieces and other paintings with the motif were produced (by, for example, Hieronymus Bosch or Hans Holbein). Like the passion plays, the visual depictions of the ecce homo scene time and again portray the people of Jerusalem as anti-Semitic caricatures, characterized by excited gestures and hideous facial features.

The motif of the lone figure of a suffering Christ who seems to be staring directly at the observer, enabling him/her to personally identify with the events of the Passion, arose in the late Middle Ages. A parallel development was that the similar motifs of the Man of Sorrow and Christ at rest increased in importance. The motif was used repeatedly in later graphic reproductions (for example, by Jackques Callot and Rembrandt van Rijn), the paintings of the Renaissance and the Baroque, as well as in Baroque sculptures.

In 1490, Hieronymus Bosch painted ecce homo in a characteristically Dutch style, with deep perspective and a surreal ghostly image of praying monks in the lower left-hand corner.

In 1498, Albrecht Dürer depicted the suffering of Christ in the ecce homo scene of his Great Passion in unusually close relation with his self-portrait, leading to a reinterpretation of the motif as a metaphor for the suffering of the artist. As a representation of the injustice of critique, James Ensor used the ecce homo motif in his bitingly ironic print Christ and the Critics(1891), in which he portrayed himself as Christ.

Especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, the meaning of ecce homo motif has been extended to the portrayal of suffering and the degradation of humans through violence and war. Famous modern depictions are: Lovis Corinth's later work Ecce homo(1925), which shows, from the perspective of the crowd, Jesus, a soldier and Pilate dressed as a physician, and Otto Dix's Ecce homo with self-likeness behind barbed wire (1948).

When Napoleon Bonaparte met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he was supposed to have initiated the conversation with the words "Vous êtes un homme" (or "Voilà un homme"). The common interpretation of this exclamation as an ecce homo paraphrase in the sense of "Look, what a man" seems to be an overstatement; Napoleon could have expressed that simply by saying "Upon meeting you, I have finally met an especially intriguing man."

Alluding to the biblical quote, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche named his autobiography Ecce Homo.

As a pun, the phrase also refers to a controversial exhibition in Europe by the Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin in 1998, also named Ecce homo, which linked the phrase with the theme of homosexuality. The exhibition comprised 12 photographs which depicted Jesus with homosexuals and were based on well-known depictions in the visual arts. The actual ecce homo motif was not depicted in the photos.