Dürer “Christ Before Pilot” from “The Passion of Christ” Engraving

Albrecht Dürer (May 21, 1471 — April 6, 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His still-famous works include the Apocalypse woodcuts, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium. Dürer’s introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatise which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.

His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Renaissance in Northern Europe ever since.

The Small Passion Series
In 1511, Dürer printed the Small Passion and worked to finish an engraved version that he would publish the following year (also hanging on this wall). Within his Passion oeuvre, perhaps no two cycles demonstrate the formal, narrative, and emotive variety as clearly as these two. The Engraved Passion is relatively limited in scope, comprising fifteen scenes, while the Small Passion is positively expansive, depicting thirty-six episodes. The engraved cycle foregrounds the psychological dimension of the Passion and encourages the viewer to linger on each scene. The more rugged woodcut Passion, on the other hand, propels the viewer through the cycle, creating a “reading” experience commensurate with the dizzying physical trials the scenes present. Where one is refined, the other is raw; where one quiet, the other loud; where one lyric, the other epic; and so on. It is as if Dürer were trying to create definitive versions of the Passion in two media that clearly have different pictorial potentials.

Albrecht Dürer “Christ Before Pilot” from “The Passion of Christ” Wood Engraving is printed on antique laid paper, measuring 4 3/8 by 5 inches with narrow margins, laided down on a acid free support sheet. From inspection of the paper, these seen to be of a later edition AFTER the original 1511 edition and most likely from the 1850 edition. Other than laided down , this and the others are all in good condition.

Art (paintings, prints, frames)