The Ascension from a set of The Passion

Albrecht Dürer|Unidentified Weaver's Mark|Unidentified Weaver's Mark

1592 · Wool, silk, metal thread (20 warp threads per inch, 8 per cm.) · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

With subtlety and dexterity, this tapestry's weaver- who apparently used the monogram ICM- borrowed, enlarged, reversed, and added color to Albrecht Dürer’s design for the Ascension woodcut in his 1511 Small Passion series. This panel is part of a group of similarly sized scenes from the New Testament, woven across more than two decades, all closely based upon printed prototypes by Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Schäufelein, Martin Schongauer and Hans Wechtlin, as well as by Dürer. Together with other surviving tapestry panels now in the Museum Haus Löwenberg in Gengenbach and spread across private collections, these small, captioned Biblical scenes were probably made on speculation for sale to Protestant individuals and religious institutions in the Strasburg area around the turn of the seventeenth century.

Artist

Albrecht Dürer|Unidentified Weaver's Mark|Unidentified Weaver's Mark

Date

1592

Medium

Wool, silk, metal thread (20 warp threads per inch, 8 per cm.)

Culture

German, Alsace, possibly Strasbourg

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1911