Skip to Content
Today Open today 11–8

The Man of Sorrows

A work made of hand-colored woodcut, printed on ivory laid paper.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

Image actions

  • A work made of hand-colored woodcut, printed on ivory laid paper.

Date:

c. 1475

Artist:

Artist unknown
German

About this artwork

Devotional woodcuts were heavily used in 15th-century Europe, variously folded and carried as talismans, pasted on bedroom walls, and kept in family Bibles. While hundreds were printed at the time, only a handful of impressions have survived to today. The only remaining extant copy of the image, this impression was pasted into the frontispiece of a book from a German Augustine nunnery, where viewers would have imagined Christ’s pain through repeated study and imitation. The woodcut offers an intensely personal focal point of meditation on Christ’s suffering. Like the nearby Thirteen Buddhas (1925.1697), he appears as a floating vision. Nearly naked after his Crucifixion, blood streams from his nail wounds and crown of thorns.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Prints and Drawings

Artist

Unknown artist

Title

The Man of Sorrows

Place

Italy (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1470–1480

Medium

Hand-colored woodcut, printed on ivory laid paper

Dimensions

Image/sheet: 18.5 × 12.1 cm (7 5/16 × 4 13/16 in.)

Credit Line

Clarence Buckingham Collection

Reference Number

1944.172

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/50163/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

Share

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive updates.

Learn more

Image actions

Share