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WFU
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Albrecht Dürer received his first training as a goldsmith under his father’s tutelage. It was during this time that his talent for drawing figures became apparent, and his father allowed him to be apprenticed to the shop of Michael Wolgemut, a renowned painter and sculptor working in Nuremberg. This training is important in discussing the Small Passion because it in Wolgemut’s workshop that Dürer received his first exposure to the art of bookmaking. Wolgemut, along with his assistant, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, were printers associated with the publisher Hans Koberger. The three craftsmen worked on several projects together, but the major book published by them, the Nuremberg Chronicle. It has been speculated that Dürer even designed some of the cuts in the book (see WFU 9-11). Whether or not he actually helped in its production does not detract from the certain influence it had upon his later experience in producing his own books. As is commonly known, Dürer created three versions of the events of the Passion: the Large Passion, a woodcut version; the Small Engraved Passion, his only engraved version--meant for collectors and connoisseurs; and the Small Passion, also a woodcut series. The print in the collection, Christ in Limbo, is from the last book. Unlike the Large Passion, however, which is a tour de force of Dürer’s consummate woodcutting skills, the smaller Passion is a homelier view of the trials of Christ. It was meant to appeal to the very devout and focuses on the more emotional side of the Passion. It was also reduced to create a book of more manageable proportions. The book consists of 37 different cuts, all of which took only two or three years to make.1 The other two Passion series took many years to produce. The 36 story plates, along with the frontispiece, are joined by a Latin poem, twenty lines long for each plate. The writer of the text, Benedictus Chelidonius, wrote the text for the Large Passion and the Life of the Virgin as well. The poem was commissioned after the cuts were already finished and completed in only two months.2 It became apparent that the text in a book was no longer the most important aspect; the cuts, or illustrations, were now the selling points of a manufactured book. Taken as a whole, the Small Passion was a presentation of the fall and redemption of man, because Dürer added cuts at the beginning and end that were not truly part of the Passion story beginning with the fall of Adam and Eve and ending with the Last Judgement. Christ in Limbo is taken from the set of plates depicting the actual Passion events. The scene, also called the "Harrowing of Hell", was probably done before the same scene in the Large Passion, which is a more elaborate version of the same composition.3 The basis for the unusual theme is taken from Catholic teachings. According to Catholic theology, limbo is a general phrase for the three regions for the deceased between heaven and hell, and sometimes more specifically, the edge or border of hell itself. The three regions referred to are purgatory, limbus infantum, and limbus patrum. Before Christ’s death and resurrection, which completed the salvation cycle for all mankind, heaven was closed to all, even those who had lived lives of saintliness. Therefore, God created a place for their souls after death. This is the region closest to heaven, limbo patrum.4 After Christ had been crucified, the saints in this middle region were eligible to be taken to heaven. Dürer’s print depicts the saints’ liberation from the borders of hell. Christ has conquered the gates of this realm, and is pulling the saints from it. Shown standing beside Christ, already having been pulled out, are John the Baptist, in his hairshirt, Adam and Eve, and Moses, revealed by the horns on his head. In the print, Dürer uses a technique he developed for the purposes of shading. Close parallel lines running through the boundaries between figures serve to create a uniform area of darkness, rather than shading any specific figure. Dürer’s print is a very close-up view of the scene, therefore creating a swell of emotion and intensity. K.H.,K.M. 1. Talbot,
1971, 183.
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