Arrest of Christ
Albrecht Dürerc. 1500–1505
Renaissance and Reformation. German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach
This composition sketched in hurried lines depicts the arrest of Christ. In the center stands the Son of God with his hands bound, surrounded by a dynamic group of soldiers who pull on his hair and garments. In the foreground there is a suggestion of Peter using his sword to cut off the soldier Malchus’s ear. In contrast to the usual depictions of this scene, Judas is missing. The question of dating is still contentious. The closeness to Dürer’s Green Passion (Albertina, Vienna) suggests that this pen drawing was a design for that eleven-part cycle on the Passion. The corresponding sheet on green prepared paper also has the motif of a soldier poking Christ in the back.
- Title: Arrest of Christ
- Creator: Albrecht Dürer
- Date Created: c. 1500–1505
- Physical Dimensions: 25.3 × 20.2 cm
- Technique and Material: Pen and dark brown ink
- Provenance: Old inventory
- Museum: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett
- Inv.-No.: KdZ 74
- ISIL-No.: DE-MUS-018511
- External Link: http://www.smb.museum/museen-und-einrichtungen/kupferstichkabinett/home.html
- Copyright: Photo © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett/ Jörg P. Anders; Text © Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach, A Cooperation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München, Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nov 20, 2016 – March 26, 2017, Munich: Prestel, 2016; cat. no. 6 / Nadine Söll
- Catalogue: https://prestelpublishing.randomhouse.de/book/Renaissance-and-Reformation/Stephanie-Buck/Prestel-com/e504919.rhd
- Artist Dates: 1471 Nuremberg–1528 Nuremberg
- Artist Biography: Dürer, who initially trained in his father’s goldsmith workshop, apprenticed to the painter Michael Wolgemut from 1486. His travels as a journeyman from 1490 to 1495 took him to the Upper Rhine and northern Italy, to which he returned a second time in 1505–7 (his stay in Venice). In 1520 he traveled to the Netherlands. Dürer’s prints, his most important source of income, made him famous throughout Europe, and the monogram AD became a seal of quality. His abundant production of paintings included altarpieces, portraits (especially of the patricians of Nuremberg), and self-portraits, among other works. Emperor Maximilian I entrusted important commissions to Dürer’s workshop, where Hans Baldung, the Beham brothers, and Hans Schäufelein were working. Dürer, who was in constant contact with important humanists, also wrote on issues of art theory, especially the theory of proportion. He was regarded as an Homo universalis (Renaissance man) already during his lifetime.
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