Luis de Morales was one of the most prominent and personal painters of the Spanish 16th century. Nothing specific is known about his training, which Palomino says took place in Seville, although today he is generally believed to have been educated in Portuguese or Castilian art circles. In Castile he may have become acquainted with the Italian painting of his day, from which he derived the idealised elegance of his models and his use of soft sfumato, and with the Flemish art that inspired his painstaking technique and interest in expressivity. Most of his career was spent in Extremadura, where from the 1630s he did remarkable work as a painter of altarpieces and devotional images, creating an important workshop in which some of his sons, also painters, were employed.

The Ecce Homo is one of the most frequent and personal motifs in his output; though limited, his thematic repertoire was extraordinarily effective for the purpose of creating images of pious fervour. In them the artist managed to capture the essence of the Spanish mysticism of his time, and their popularity gave rise to numerous workshop copies and versions by imitators that detracted from the quality of his work and damaged his reputation in the eyes of later generations.

In the work in the Banco Santander Collection, we see Jesus wearing the crown of thorns; his arms are crossed over his chest, and the rope that binds his hands is also knotted round his neck. The purple mantle that usually covers his shoulders in other renderings of the Ostentatio Christi is missing, and he is not holding the reed as a mock sceptre in his hands, an omission criticised by Francisco Pacheco in his Arte de la Pintura. The model, with a soft sfumato of Leonardesque origin, comes from Lombardy and can be associated with the art of Gian Petrino, according to E. du Gué Trapier. Christ's face expresses serene resignation and his gaze is meek, but the eyes are more open than in other works, in a manner closer to images of the Nazarene. The artist emphasised the dramatic nature of the depiction by making the figure stand out against a dark ground entirely devoid of spatial references. This was in keeping with the doctrine of the Council of Trent, which called for decorum in religious art and the eschewal of all elements unrelated to the spirituality of the work. Morales's intention was not to narrate a particular moment in the Passion of the Christ, but to paint a forlorn figure that would encourage pious meditation, an image more mental than real, thus making it a vehicle for prayer. This pictorial conception is a consequence of the spirituality of the age and of religious ideas like those of the Venerable Louis of Granada (1504–1588) who, in his precepts of emotional meditation, reiterated the need to focus on a mental image—a task undoubtedly made easier by works like this. It is also a product of Trentian ideology and its Passionist sentiment, which Morales probably learned from St. Juan de Ribera while serving as the prelate's official painter during his term as bishop of Badajoz, from 1562 to 1568.

This panel is an example of Morales's most characteristic style, in which he interpreted the Italian models learned in his youth with Flemish technique and sensibility and with a pathos typical of the late Gothic tradition. The formal elegance and delicate, precise brushwork, enriched by tenuous and subtle glazing, are also typical of Morales at the height of his skills. Of all his extant works, the most similar to this image are the Ecce Homo in the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Madrid, and that owned by the Hispanic Society of America, New York, although both compositions have several figures. This similarity and the stylistic qualities of the painting allow us to date it to the final period of the artist's career. It may have been a pendant piece to a Mater Dolorosa, forming a diptych like the autograph work held in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Málaga. This type of painting, intended for private devotion, was very common in Morales’s day. [Trinidad de Antonio]