Art Institute of Chicago

Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John (recto); Saint Sebald with the Donors Paul Volkmayr and Sebald Schreyer (verso)

Date

c. 1485–90

Medium

Woodcut illuminated on vellum, with miniature on verso

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

This Crucifixion woodcut was printed on precious vellum, and illuminated with textured gold leaf and opaque pigment to resemble an illuminated manuscript page. It boasts not one, but two donor portraits and the date, 1490, on its verso. Paul Volkmayr and Sebald Schreyer, whose presence also decorated another woodcut in 1501, may have commissioned them all as frontispieces or bookplates for ecclesiastical volumes they gave to the Church of Saint Sebald in Nuremberg. Two more impressions of this sheet survive (Bamberg, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), both including a variation on this opulent dedication miniature.

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