Christ Carrying the Crossca. 1475–80
A great procession winds across the sheet towards Calvary, with soldiers on horseback, dogs and onlookers surrounding Christ, who has fallen beneath the weight of the cross. More about this work
About this work
A great procession winds across the sheet towards Calvary, with soldiers on horseback, dogs and onlookers surrounding Christ, who has fallen beneath the weight of the cross. This is the largest and most ambitious engraving by Martin Schongauer of Colmar, the leading printmaker in Europe before Dürer, who travelled to Colmar hoping to meet him but arrived after his death. Schongauer’s precise, curving lines model figures, armour and landscape with an assurance that made his prints widely copied across Europe.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Engraving
- Lines cut directly into a metal plate with a steel burin, which makes them swell and taper. It took years to master, and for centuries it was how paintings travelled as pictures.
Martin Schongauer
German, c. 1450–1491 · Born in Colmar; died in Breisach.
Schongauer, the son of a goldsmith, worked in Colmar in Alsace and was both a painter and the most accomplished engraver of fifteenth-century northern Europe. His engravings, more than a hundred, brought a new range of tone and texture to the medium and circulated widely; the young Michelangelo copied his Temptation of Saint Anthony, and Dürer travelled to Colmar hoping to meet him, arriving after his death. His Passion series shows his clear, expressive storytelling.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 35.27
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Prints
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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More by Martin Schongauer
All their works
Close in colour
