Cleveland Museum of Art
Leaf from a Book of Hours: The Raising of the Cross
- Date
- c. 1510–20
- Medium
- tempera and liquid gold on vellum
- Culture
- Germany, Nuremberg
- Department
- Medieval Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 164631
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
This finely painted miniature is the work of an artist familiar with the designs of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Though not deriving from a known engraving or drawing, the style, composition, and especially the modeling of the figure of Christ refer to the draftsmanship and tonalities found in Dürer's works. This miniature depicts the moment the cross is raised. In the foreground, thuggish brutes struggle to bring it upright. The skull of Adam at the foot of the cross signifies that Golgotha was Adam's burial place. In the background, a vivid blue sky recedes into pink as it meets the horizon and a distant town. The inclusion of an illusionistic, trompe l'oeil border, strewn with flowers and butterflies on a gold ground, follows the tradition of Ghent and Bruges, where such borders were first developed during the 1470s and 1480s. Books of hours were devotional books popular in the Middle Ages and meant for laypeople, or those not in the clergy.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection
- Provenance
- Esther Rosenbaum (d. 1980), Chicago, IL | November 16, 1975: [Sale: Swann's New York, NY, 11/16/1975, lot 207] | 1975-: [Roger S. Wieck, New York, NY, sold to Bruce Ferrini] | [Bruce Ferrini, Akron, OH, sold to Jeanne Miles Blackburn] | -2006: Jeanne Miles Blackburn, North Carolina & Florida, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 2006-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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