Museum of Montserrat - EN

The woodcuts of the Passion of Christ by Lucas Cranach

Lucas Cranach the Elder (Kronach, 1472 – Weimar, 1553), along with Albrecht Dürer, is the greatest exponent of German Renaissance painting. When he established his residence in Wittenberg in 1504, in the service of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, he witnessed firsthand the major events of the Reformation led by the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and sincerely embraced it, even though Cranach was a peaceful and rather conciliatory man. In addition to being a court painter and receiving commissions from churches, nobles, and burghers, he was an engraver of subjects of all kinds, but primarily religious ones connected with the spirit of the Reformation. In 1509 he engraved the fourteen woodcuts of the Passion of Christ, coinciding with the edition of The Small Passion published by Dürer around that time. The edition is preceded by a frontispiece bearing the Latin inscription that we translate as follows: “Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ told in most beautiful images by the painter to the Duke of Saxony, Lucas Cranach, in the year 1509”. The collection of the Abbey of Montserrat contains twelve of the fourteen prints that make up the complete series. They originate from the testamentary bequest of the architect Xavier Busquets, who likely acquired them in Basel along with several other artworks now housed in the Museum of Montserrat. Prints 1 and 2, which depict the Agony in the Garden and the Arrest of Jesus, are missing. These are woodcuts made from a 24.7 x 17.2 cm block, printed two per sheet on pages measuring 31.2 x 38.7 cm. We have not been able to ascertain—since they remain unknown even in academic circles—whether they belong to an edition close to the editio princeps, but it is indeed an edition prior to the 17th or 18th century, as several sheets bear remnants of handwritten script from that period.