The Penance of St. John Chrysostom (c. 1497): Art, History and Details

The Penance of St. John Chrysostom (c. 1497) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528).

The work and its context

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

In the late Middle Ages an unusual legend was assigned to John Chrysostom, a hermit saint who lived in the wilderness. The story related that the daughter of the emperor lost her way during a storm and found shelter in the saint’s cave. In weakness, he betrayed his vow of chastity and in guilt, threw her off a cliff. To repent, John crawled like a beast in the wild for many years. When the girl was miraculously found alive with her child, John was absolved of his sins. Dürer’s focus on the mother and child is unprecedented in representations of the story. Although scholars generally view this print as an opportunity for the artist to depict the female nude, it is also possible that Dürer sought to illustrate a mother’s pure love and its virtuous triumph over sin.

Object facts

• Title: The Penance of St. John Chrysostom
• Date: c. 1497
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany, late 15th-early 16th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1934.339

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "Engravings by Albrect Dürer." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 22, no. 4 (April 1935): 59-64.

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.