1475
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
The Crucifixion with Four Angels is a 1475 by Martin Schongauer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a thin, suffering Christ on the cross, with Mary and John weeping below. Four angels hover, catching his blood in golden cups. A skull and bone rest at the base of the cross. Schongauer made this scene feel real by carving tiny details—wrinkles in cloth, veins in Christ’s hands—into metal plates. The prints could be copied and shared, spreading the image far beyond one church. To see how other artists showed the same moment, look up Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491).
Martin Schongauer engraved several variations of the Crucifixion, often inspired by fifteenth-century Netherlandish paintings of the same subject. Here, upon a realistic landscape, the exaggeratedly thin and emaciated body of Christ hangs on the cross.The Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist are mourning Christ's death at each side of the cross. Four hovering angels catch the blood from Christ's wounds and collect it in chalices. At the bottom of the cross, a bone and the skull of Adam, lie on the ground, and allude to Golgotha, the site of Christ's crucifixion, believed to be the spot…
The collecting of Christ's blood in chalices by the angels in this composition refers directly to transubstantiation, or conversion of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ during Roman Catholic mass.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Martin Schongauer, also known as Martin Schön or Hübsch Martin by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter.
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