Sebald Beham
German, 1500-1550
Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns
INV-2335
Sebald Beham
German, 1500-1550c. 1535
Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns
Sebald Beham German, 1500-1550 →woodcutprint
Date
c. 1535
Medium
Woodcut in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Block: 42.7 × 32.2 cm (16 13/16 × 12 11/16 in.); Sheet: 49.3 × 32.2 cm (19 7/16 × 12 11/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Potter Palmer
Domestic decoration made religious imagery ubiquitous and prints even functioned as private shrines. For those requiring a wall-mounted image to focus their devotions, Sebald Beham’s magnificent, over-life-size Head of Christ woodcut after Dürer’s 1513 Sudarium engraving presents a dramatic close-up view of the imprint of the Holy Face. Its grand scale may be inspired by a fifteenth-century continuously repeating Sudarium wallpaper. Off-printing of the same image on the verso of this impression—a product of stacking and pressing multiple impressions in the workshop before they fully dried—is an unintentional reminder of printmaking’s symbolic function in the Sudarium story.
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