Cleveland Museum of Art

Christ Carrying the Cross

Date

1475–90

Medium

engraving

Culture

Germany

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This complex engraving depicts Christ's walk to Golgotha, the site of his Crucifixion. A crowd, depicted as violent and uncaring, moves across a rocky landscape. At the center of the procession, Christ has fallen under the weight of his huge cross. Martin Schongauer made Christ's gaze the only one directly confronting and involving the viewer in his anguish. Images like this functioned as devotional tools meant to help the faithful to meditate on Christ's suffering during his trial, torture, and execution. The large size and composition of this engraving likely emulated a painting of the same subject by the artist Jan Van Eyck, now lost and known only though copies.

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