The empty cross with its ladder; one of the two others still hangs on his cross.
Bible in art · John
The Deposition
Albrecht Dürer · c. 1497–1510
The Cleveland Museum of Art
The museum calls this sheet the Deposition; it shows the body being carried to the tomb, a scene often called the Entombment. Dürer cut it about 1497–1500 for the Large Passion.
Two men lift the body by the shoulders and legs toward a stone tomb at the right. A kneeling woman holds the wounded hand, and a woman sits weeping in front. On the hill behind stand the empty cross with its ladder and the crosses of the two others.
From the text
- The tomb in a garden near the place of the crucifixion (John 19:41–42)
- Joseph laying the body in his new tomb (Matthew 27:59–60)
- The women sitting opposite the tomb (Matthew 27:61)
The artist’s own
- The tomb as a stone chest above the ground, as in churches of Dürer’s day, not cut in the rock
- Turbans and fur hats on the old men
Details
On the hill
Carried
Two men lift the body by the shoulders and legs.
The tomb
A stone tomb chest stands open at the right.
Weeping
A woman sits on the ground with tears on her cheeks.
Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471–1528. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in memory of Ralph King, 1926.119) · Woodcut · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).