The Man of Sorrows
c. 1475
Medium
Hand-colored woodcut, printed on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/sheet: 18.5 × 12.1 cm (7 5/16 × 4 13/16 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
50163
Rights
Public Domain
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 int...