Albrecht Dürer's _Small Passion_ | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The Small Passion is a series of thirty-seven prints that relates the Christian history of man’s salvation, beginning with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and ending with the Last Judgment. It was published as a set in 1511 and bound with explanatory text in Latin written by the Benedictine monk Chelidonius of Nuremberg. Although text was included within the book, the images were the primary focus and were meant to guide prayer and devotion, especially for a largely illiterate audience. For this series, Albrecht Dürer utilized a woodblock print, a relief technique in which the reverse of the image is carved into wood and the uncarved surface carries the ink for printing. Wood was a more economic material than the metal used for engraving; therefore, woodblock prints were more affordable and could reach a wider audience.

Excerpt from

Laura Sevelis, DMA wall text, 2015

NOTES

Archived under 1958.24. JRussell 2018

General Description full source: Laura Sevelis, DMA wall text for Saints and Monsters: Prints by Albrecht Dürer, March 2015

36 woodcuts plus a title page

woodcuts on right side of each spread, with twenty line poem on left page.

author was Benedictus Chelidonius, a Benedictine monk, who also wrote the texts for Life of the Virgin and the Large Passion.

Passion:

4 additional scenes at the beginning- Fall of man, Expulsion from Parasise, Annunciation, and Nativity

7 scenes as added epilogue- Christ appearing to His Mother, Noli me Tangere, Christ in Emmaus, Doubting Thomas, Ascension, Pentecost, and The Last Judgement

Dramatic staging similar to The Life of the Virgin

Though published the same year as Large Passion and The Life of the Virign, this was unique because he completed entire series in short amount of time (1509-1511)

ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS

Dürer, Albrecht (German, 1471–1528)

AUDIO ASSETS

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

WEB RESOURCES

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~View the print The Fall of Man from the Small Passion series by Albrecht Dürer.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~View the print The Resurrection from the Small Passion series by Albrecht Dürer.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston~View the print Crucifixion from the Small Passion series by Albrecht Dürer.
The British Museum, London~Check out this woodblock used to print the twenty-ninth plate in the Small Passion series.
Emory University, Pitts Theology Library~View five prints from the Small Passion series by Albrecht Dürer.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

set operator as or

apply to objects where id equals 1958.24

apply to objects where id equals 1958.23

apply to objects where id equals 1971.79

General Description

The Small Passion is a series of thirty-seven prints that relates the Christian history of man’s salvation, beginning with the Temptation of Adam and Eve and ending with the Last Judgment. It was published as a set in 1511 and bound with explanatory text in Latin written by the Benedictine monk Chelidonius of Nuremberg. Although text was included within the book, the images were the primary focus and were meant to guide prayer and devotion, especially for a largely illiterate audience. For this series, Albrecht Dürer utilized a woodblock print, a relief technique in which the reverse of the image is carved into wood and the uncarved surface carries the ink for printing. Wood was a more economic material than the metal used for engraving; therefore, woodblock prints were more affordable and could reach a wider audience.