The Crucifixion, from "The Passion"

The Crucifixion, from "The Passion," by Albrecht Dürer, is a masterfully executed engraving created in 1511. This print belongs to Dürer’s influential Engraved Passion series, which demonstrated the full expressive potential of line work and the small scale of graphic arts. Dürer, a pivotal figure in the Northern Renaissance, elevated the status of printmaking through his unmatched technical precision and meticulous handling of detail. The work exhibits the dramatic complexity typical of the artist, balancing a crowd of agitated figures with a structured composition centered squarely on Christ on the cross.

The composition meticulously details the emotional intensity of the scene at Golgotha. The sorrowful figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist flank the base of the cross, grounding the pathos of the narrative, while Roman soldiers and spectators fill the background. Unlike his contemporaneous woodcuts, this engraving allowed Dürer to achieve subtle gradations of light and shadow and complex textures using only the burin on a copper plate. These highly detailed prints were critical to the artist’s commercial success and widespread fame, allowing his profound interpretations of biblical narratives to circulate broadly across Europe.

This iconic example of early 16th-century German printmaking currently resides in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The enduring appeal of Dürer’s devotional images ensures their continued study across art historical disciplines. As this work, along with many of Dürer’s foundational graphic art pieces, is now generally considered to be in the public domain, high-quality digital representations and reproductions of these key prints are widely accessed by scholars and enthusiasts worldwide.