Christ with the Instruments of the Passion

c. 1504

Pen and black ink, backed

282 × 198 mm

Praun-, Esterházy collection

Baldung entered Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg presumably in 1503 and worked primarily on designs for stained glass windows. This drawing, too, might have been such a design dating from around 1504. The work was probably commissioned by the Scheurl family in Nuremberg because the donor on the left is the famous jurist, diplomat and humanist Christoph Scheurl. Depictions of Christ with the instrument of the passion: the cross, the lance, the sponge on a reed, the scourge, the bundle of twigs, and the crown of thorns served to invite believers to contemplate Christ’s passion with religious devotion.