1480
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Passion: Christ Before Annas is a 1480 by Martin Schongauer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A crowd of angry men shoves Jesus toward a seated judge. Torches flicker, faces twist in rage, and Jesus stands calm in the center. Schongauer packed every inch with sharp, jagged lines—cloaks, beards, even the firelight looks spiky. This print was copied so often that later artists, including a young Dürer, traced it to learn how to draw emotion. To see how engraving could tell a story, look up *chiaroscuro*.
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, Christ is led to the high priest Annas to be judged, prior to being brought before Pontius Pilate.
The dog in this scene likely refers to late medieval Passion literature, which often compared Christ's tormentors to dogs.
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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