Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane
1460–65
Medium
Metalcut in black hand colored with brush and watercolor in yellow, red-brown lake, and green, on ivory laid paper, with manuscript text in pen and brown ink on verso
Dimensions
Plate: 10 × 7.5 cm (3 15/16 × 3 in.); Sheet: 10.5 × 8 cm (4 3/16 × 3 3/16 in.)
Classification
dotted/metal cut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
155499
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Communion bread came in different shapes in Renaissance Europe, and this variety is particularly clear from depictions of the Last Supper, when Christ symbolically offers his body to his disciples. In this metalcut series on the life of Christ, the shape of the bread—the traditional Bretzel, or pretzel—betrays that the prints were made in Bavaria. While the handwritten text on the verso of the adjoining sheet in the booklet (once comprising nineteen metalcuts) does not mention the pretzel, it is...