1480
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Passion: Christ Bearing the Cross is a 1480 by Martin Schongauer, a Renaissance work, depicting Christ Carrying the Cross, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A crowd presses around Jesus as he carries a heavy wooden cross. Soldiers shout, faces twisted in anger. The city gate of Jerusalem looms in the background. Schongauer packed the scene with tiny details—each face tells a different story. This was part of a series of prints showing Christ’s final days, copied all over Europe. The lines are sharp, almost like a drawing, but meant to be printed again and again. To see how this fits into the bigger story, look up *The Cleveland Museum of Art*.
Martin Schongauer's series of the Passion of Christ was his largest set of engravings, made around 1480, and extensively copied across Europe. It consists of twelve prints detailing the suffering of Christ in the last days of his life. Schongauer's version focuses on crowded scenes, grotesque physiognomies of Christ's tormentors, and great pathos in the compositions. Here, a long procession exits the city gate of Jerusalem. Christ, at the center, is weighed down by the heavy cross which he must carry to Calvary. On the left, the Virgin Mary cries for the imminent death of her son, while…
Veronica's veil, or the sudarium , retained an imprint of Christ's face and was believed in the late Middle Ages to have the power to self-replicate each time it came into contact with other clothes.
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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