The Passion: Christ Bearing the Cross (c. 1480): Art, History and Details

The Passion: Christ Bearing the Cross (c. 1480) 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:

Martin Schongauer's series of the Passion of Christ was his largest set of engravings, made around 1480, and extensively copied across Europe. It consists of twelve prints detailing the suffering of Christ in the last days of his life. Schongauer's version focuses on crowded scenes, grotesque physiognomies of Christ's tormentors, and great pathos in the compositions. Here, a long procession exits the city gate of Jerusalem. Christ, at the center, is weighed down by the heavy cross which he must carry to Calvary. On the left, the Virgin Mary cries for the imminent death of her son, while Veronica holds the sudarium, used to wipe his sweat and blood, and imprinted with his face.

Object facts

• Title: The Passion: Christ Bearing the Cross
• Date: c. 1480
• Creator attribution: Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1922.86

A detail from the museum

Veronica's veil, or the sudarium, retained an imprint of Christ's face and was believed in the late Middle Ages to have the power to self-replicate each time it came into contact with other clothes.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

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.