Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John (recto); Saint Sebald with the Donors Paul Volkmayr and Sebald Schreyer (verso)
c. 1485–90
Medium
Woodcut illuminated on vellum, with miniature on verso
Dimensions
30.4 × 18.9 cm (12 × 7 1/2 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
19520
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This Crucifixion woodcut was printed on precious vellum, and illuminated with textured gold leaf and opaque pigment to resemble an illuminated manuscript page. It boasts not one, but two donor portraits and the date, 1490, on its verso. Paul Volkmayr and Sebald Schreyer, whose presence also decorated another woodcut in 1501, may have commissioned them all as frontispieces or bookplates for ecclesiastical volumes they gave to the Church of Saint Sebald in Nuremberg. Two more impressions of this s...