1480
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Passion: Christ Taken Captive is a 1480 by Martin Schongauer, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a crowd of angry men dragging Jesus away. His hands are tied, and a rope is looped around his neck like a leash. One soldier yanks the rope while another grabs his hair. Schongauer packed the scene with twisted faces—some look almost like monsters. The prints were cheap to make and easy to carry, so they spread fast across Europe. People used them to pray at home. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how light and shadow make these scenes feel even more dramatic.
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—with his hands tied—is led away with a rope around his neck by one of his captors. A second soldier seizes him by his left arm, and a third one grasps a lock of his hair. In the foreground, Peter, in an attempt to…
Though the Roman soldier on the right holds a ball and chain weapon (or flail), such weapons are not known to have been used by the Roman military.
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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