The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine
ca. 1498
Medium
Black ink on carved pearwood
Dimensions
15 1/2 × 11 1/8 × 1 in. (39.4 × 28.3 × 2.6 cm)
Classification
Blocks
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Junius Spencer Morgan, 1919
Accession Number
19.73.256
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold Albrecht Dürer's *The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine*, a remarkable woodblock carved around 1498 from pearwood and inked in black. Measuring 15½ × 11⅛ inches, this is not a finished print but the actual printing block itself—a rare survival from the Northern Renaissance master. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, it exemplifies Dürer's innovative mastery of woodcut technique, where intricate carvings on soft pearwood allowed for unprecedented detail rivaling engraving. Dürer, a Nuremberg artist pivotal to the German Renaissance, produced this during...
About the Artist
Albrecht Dürer · 1471–1528
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) stands as the preeminent figure of the Northern Renaissance and arguably the most influential artist in the history of printmaking. Born in Nuremberg on May 21, 1471, and dying in the same city on April 6, 1528, Dürer revolutionized the status of the artist in Northern Europe, transforming printmaking from a commercial craft into an independent fine art and establishing ...