Albrecht Dürer – Small Xylographic Passion

Albrecht Dürer – Small Xylographic Passion

From 1505 to 1507, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was undertaking a grand tour of Italy, gathering formative impressions for his own art in the Promised Land of the Renaissance. Once returned from Italy, he busied himself with religious subjects such as the life of Mary, the Passion of the Christ, and the Apocalypse. This gave rise, likely between 1509 and 1510, to the 37 full-page woodcuts, which Dürer finally published in 1511 in book form titled Kleine Passion in Nuremberg. This first edition was published with Latin verses by the Benedictine monk and humanist Benedictus Chelidonius (c. 1480–1521), which accompany the picture cycle on the Passion of Christ and served as the thematic basis for Dürer’s visual compositions.

The Passion of Christ in Brilliant Imagery

36 woodcuts and a title page bring this story of suffering closer to the viewer. Albrecht Dürer, who was already known to his contemporaries as a highly talented graphic artist, particularly since his 1498 woodcut series The Apocalypse, followed the traditional iconography, and yet conveyed his own unmistakable and perfected style. The series begins with the Fall of Man and the Expulsion from Paradise. After that the actual Passion unfolds, leading up to Christ’s death, the Resurrection and the Ascension. Dürer also included several scenes from Genesis and from the childhood of Christ into his series. The Last Judgement scene serves as the final piece of the series. With their dimensions of 127 x 98 mm, the woodcuts are relatively small, especially in comparison to Dürer’s Great Passion, which features woodcuts measuring 400 x 300 mm each; however, this cycle is significantly more extensive and embeds the story of Christ’s suffering within a broader context of salvation history.

A True Bestseller

Thus, the work fits into its era of the early Northern Renaissance, when the Passion devotion—which had grown increasingly significant in the Late Middle Ages—was still widespread, and the Passion was accordingly a popular theme in art. During private devotions and prayer, the faithful were meant to immerse themselves in what was known as “compassio” and empathize with Christ’s suffering directly, a process in which the striking images were highly supportive. Due to the theme’s great popularity, Dürer’s Small Passion was a true bestseller and was reprinted time and again well into the 20th century.

Dürer’s Small Passion in Italian

The high demand for Dürer’s Small Passion led not only to imitations of the work but also made the original printing blocks from 1511 a sought-after commodity. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Venetian printer Daniel Bisuccio (fl. 1602–1615) acquired them and subsequently published an Italian edition of the Small Passion with texts by Mauritio Moro in 1612.