The Passion: The Entombment (c. 1480): Art, History and Details

The Passion: The Entombment (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, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist are shown with their back and side to the viewer. Their attention is focused on Christ's body, which is lowered into a sarcophagus by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Mourning women witness the entombment.

Object facts

• Title: The Passion: The Entombment
• Date: c. 1480
• Creator attribution: Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1925.27

A detail from the museum

Martin Schongauer creates a sophisticated visual connection between this scene and that of the Crucifixion by including an empty cross on a hill in the distance.

Collection credit

Gift of Ralph King

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.