The Flagellation, from the Circular Passion

Lucas van Leyden

1509 · Engraving · Drawings and Prints

Lucas van Leyden is said to have designed the elegant, subtle prints in the Circular Passion as models for stained-glass makers. Small, domestic, stained glass-windows of the period were often round. Lucas gave the figure of the soldier at left an odd curved pose that reflects the shape of the print. He created the outer ring containing vines and putti from a separate printing plate that he used with all the images in the series. Lucas, the greatest sixteenth-century Netherlandish printmaker, created a scene at once full of movement and noise yet very still and contemplative.

Artist

Lucas van Leyden

Date

1509

Medium

Engraving

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1940