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

The Passion: The Flagellation (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, Jesus is bound to the column by one persecutor while three others are about to flagellate him with a set of different scourges. A fourth, to the left, prepares the crown of thorns.

Object facts

• Title: The Passion: The Flagellation
• Date: c. 1480
• Creator attribution: Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1923.276

A detail from the museum

The assorted and detailed set of grisly scourges included in this scene was likely meant to elicit a deep meditation on Christ's physical suffering from the viewer.

Collection credit

Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

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.