Christ Carrying the Cross (1475–90): Art, History and Details

Christ Carrying the Cross (1475–90) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This complex engraving depicts Christ's walk to Golgotha, the site of his Crucifixion. A crowd, depicted as violent and uncaring, moves across a rocky landscape. At the center of the procession, Christ has fallen under the weight of his huge cross. Martin Schongauer made Christ's gaze the only one directly confronting and involving the viewer in his anguish. Images like this functioned as devotional tools meant to help the faithful to meditate on Christ's suffering during his trial, torture, and execution.

Object facts

• Title: Christ Carrying the Cross
• Date: 1475–90
• Creator attribution: Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29 x 43.6 cm (11 7/16 x 17 3/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1941.389

A detail from the museum

The large size and composition of this engraving likely emulated a painting of the same subject by the artist Jan Van Eyck, now lost and known only though copies.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry S. "The Museum's Collection of Engravings by Martin Schongauer." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art XXXIII, no. 10 (December, 1946).
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.