Christ Bearing the Cross

Albrecht Dürer · c. 1497–1510
The Cleveland Museum of Art

Dürer cut this woodcut for the Large Passion about 1497–1500. It shows the procession just outside the city gate.

Jesus has fallen to his knees under the cross and turns his face toward us. A soldier pulls him on by a rope, riders and soldiers crowd behind, and at the left women follow; one kneels holding out a cloth.

From the text

The soldiers taking him away (John 19:16)

Carrying his own cross, he went out of the city (John 19:17)

Women in the crowd following him, mourning (Luke 23:27)

The artist’s own

The woman with the cloth — Veronica of later tradition, who is not in the Gospels

Jesus fallen to the ground: the falls on the way are a tradition too

A gate with an iron portcullis and a castle above, like a town of Dürer’s Germany

Details

Fallen

Jesus has sunk to his knees under the heavy beam.

The cloth

A woman kneels holding out a cloth — Veronica, a figure of later tradition.

The rope

A soldier drags him on by a rope.

The gate

The city gate with its portcullis raised.

Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471–1528. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in memory of Ralph King, 1926.117) · Woodcut · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).