Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Raising of the Cross (c. 1510–20): Art, History and Details

Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Raising of the Cross (c. 1510–20) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This finely painted miniature is the work of an artist familiar with the designs of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Though not deriving from a known engraving or drawing, the style, composition, and especially the modeling of the figure of Christ refer to the draftsmanship and tonalities found in Dürer's works. This miniature depicts the moment the cross is raised. In the foreground, thuggish brutes struggle to bring it upright. The skull of Adam at the foot of the cross signifies that Golgotha was Adam's burial place. In the background, a vivid blue sky recedes into pink as it meets the horizon and a distant town. The inclusion of an illusionistic, trompe l'oeil border, strewn with flowers and butterflies on a gold ground, follows the tradition of Ghent and Bruges, where such borders were first developed during the 1470s and 1480s.

Object facts

• Title: Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Raising of the Cross
• Date: c. 1510–20
• Culture: Germany, Nuremberg
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: tempera and liquid gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 18.7 x 13.4 cm (7 3/8 x 5 1/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 2006.14

A detail from the museum

Books of hours were devotional books popular in the Middle Ages and meant for laypeople, or those not in the clergy.

Collection credit

The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fliegel, Stephen N. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.

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.