The Small Woodcut Passion

1511·Woodcut and letterpress in black, with additions in pen and brown ink on cream laid paper, in modern full red calfskin, sewn on raised bands, with blind fillets around inner-edges of boards, blind lines and gold titling on the spine, and hand-sewn silk headbands·15.9 × 11.9 cm (6 5/16 × 4 11/16 in.)

Opposite Dürer’s woodcut The Crucifixion (folio C viii verso), a sixteenth-century viewer honed in on this sacred event. He inscribed several lines personalizing his experience of the print below the monk Benedict Cheledonius’s text, where there was room: In Cruce pendentem / rogo te Deum omnipotentem / ut mihi des mentem / te semper amare volentem (I ask you, omnipotent God, hanging on the Cross, that you grant me a mind wishing always to love you). This seems like an intimately pious, original outburst, as it addresses Christ directly, but it actually quotes a well-known Latin prayer from the Hours of the Cross.

Catalogue

Year: 1511
Medium: Woodcut and letterpress in black, with additions in pen and brown ink on cream laid paper, in modern full red calfskin, sewn on raised bands, with blind fillets around inner-edges of boards, blind lines and gold titling on the spine, and hand-sewn silk headbands
Dimensions: 15.9 × 11.9 cm (6 5/16 × 4 11/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Albrecht Dürer

Artist

Albrecht Dürer

Painting

Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.

Nuremberg, Germany

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