Art Institute of Chicago

Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns

Sebald Beham

Date

c. 1535

Medium

Woodcut in black on cream laid paper

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Domestic decoration made religious imagery ubiquitous and prints even functioned as private shrines. For those requiring a wall-mounted image to focus their devotions, Sebald Beham’s magnificent, over-life-size Head of Christ woodcut after Dürer’s 1513 Sudarium engraving presents a dramatic close-up view of the imprint of the Holy Face. Its grand scale may be inspired by a fifteenth-century continuously repeating Sudarium wallpaper. Off-printing of the same image on the verso of this impression—a product of stacking and pressing multiple impressions in the workshop before they fully dried—is an unintentional reminder of printmaking’s symbolic function in the Sudarium story.

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