Great Passion (Dürer)

At first, after settling in Nuremberg, Dürer only produced prints, a far more guaranteed income stream than chasing commissions for paintings.

He drew on both local and foreign artistic influences, including Raphael's Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary.

[1] The stand-out print from his first phase of work on Passion is Christ Bearing his Cross - its crowd and Christ uniting two themes from copperplate engravings by Martin Schongauer and accentuating their Late Gothic style whilst the musculature of the soldier on the right also draws on the contemporary study of anatomy which Dürer would have seen in Italian Renaissance works in Venice.

These two influences are merged in an idiosyncratic but naturalistic style, making the best use of the bold black-white contrast inherent in woodcutting, giving volume to the figures through parallel hatching, already used for copperplate engravings at that time.

In the meantime, Dürer had had to release individual prints from the set, thus (combined with its less sensational and fantastical nature than Apocalypse) lessening the final work's impact and success.