The Holy Trinity
1511
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer spent his life in Nuremberg, a busy German city where artists traded prints like currency.
See the richer artist page1511
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
The Holy Trinity is a 1511 by Albrecht Dürer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see God the Father holding the dead Christ, a dove between them, while angels and saints crowd the sky. Dürer carved this on wood, not painted it. Every shadow is made of tiny lines—some thick, some thin—pressed into paper. The white spaces glow like light, making the scene feel alive. Look up how Dürer used chiaroscuro—the way dark and light push against each other—to shape faces and clouds.
The Holy Trinity represents the pinnacle of Dürer's achievement in woodcut. Using a system of parallel lines, crosshatching, and dashes of varying densities, he attained a wide range of tone and an extremely subtle representation of three-dimensional forms and spatial depth. In addition, he utilized white areas of the paper to heighten parts of the composition for an intensely dramatic effect.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Albrecht Dürer spent his life in Nuremberg, a busy German city where artists traded prints like currency.
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