GERMAN
Christ on the cross with Mary and Saint John and three angels, circa 1480

Woodcut on parchment; hand coloured and with gold leaves on the haloes
Sheet: 36,4 x 25,6 cm
Schreiber 950

  • a true gem in the history of print making
  • iconic and powerful image
  • extremely rare
  • better than the impression in the National Gallery, Washington

PROVENANCE
Hellmuth Wallach (1901 – Munich, New York, Bern, Peretshofen - 1989)
by descent until 2015
Emanuel von Baeyer, London
From whom acquired by a Private collection

PRICE
Please contact me

LITERATURE
Ludwig Hain, Repertorium bibliographicum, Stuttgart 1828-38, vol. 1, no. 1272
W.H. Weale, Catalogus missalium ritus latini ab anno 1474, London 1886, p. 43
Paul Heitz, mit einer Einleitung von Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Christus am Kreuz, Kanonbilder der in Deutschland gedruckten Messbücher des 15. Jahrhunderts, Straßburg 1910, p. 20, no. 33 and plate 33
Schreiber, Wilhelm Ludwig, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2, Leipzig,  1926-1930, vol. 2, no. 950
Richard S. Field, Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts from the National Gallery of Art, Exh. cat. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1965, no 140 (an uncoloured copy)
Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Catalogue des incunables a figures, Imprimes en Allemagne, en Suisse, en Autriche-Ongrie et en Scandinavie, vol. 2, reedition of 1911, Stuttgart 1969, no. 4677,2
The illustrated Bartsch 163 (Supplement) ed. by Richard S. Field, German Single-leaf woodcuts before 1500, 1990, no. 950
Emanuel von Baeyer, The Hellmuth Wallach collection, London 2016, no. 8, p. 26, 27 (erroneously as Michael Wolgemut)

A note on the provenance:
Hellmuth Wallach was one of the leading antiquarians in Munich. As a Jew he was forced to emigrate after the Nazis came to power. He reestablished his Munich business in New York at 558 Madison Avenue together with Emil Hirsch. As a true Bavarian Hellmuth Wallach was terribly homesick, but it wasn’t until 1970 that he returned to Europe, first to Switzerland and then to the tiny village of Peretshofen, located in the beautiful foothills of the Bavarian Alps. Wallach’s extraordinary collection of prints of the finest quality had a special focus on Old Masters and spanned from the 15th to the 19th century.

The present Christ on the cross is an extremely rare single-leaf woodcut from the 15th century. Its powerful simplicity in design gives it a timeless beauty. It was also used as a Canon woodcut in the Missale Brandenburgensis, Nuremberg, 1494. Most of the early single-leaf woodcuts did not survive due to their fragility and everyday use. They were regarded by their contemporaries as holy objects that had physical power against evil and disease. As such they were often pasted on walls of the interior rooms to be as present and close as possible. Our Christ on the cross is special in several ways. First of all, it is exceptionally well preserved. Then it is originally hand coloured with the haloes of St. Mary and St. John in precious gold leaves. And it is printed on parchment instead of the more common paper. It is a true gem in the history of print making.

There is another, but uncoloured copy on parchment in the National Gallery, Washington, Rosenwald collection, 1943.3.542
www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.3754.html