Assumption and coronation of the Virgin. From: The life of the Virgin

item details

NameAssumption and coronation of the Virgin. From: The life of the Virgin

ProductionAlbrecht Dürer; 1510

Classificationprints, woodcuts, works on paper

Materialspaper

Materials Summarywoodcut

Techniqueswoodcut

DimensionsImage: 209mm (width), 295mm (height)

Registration Number1971-0028-4

Credit linePurchased 1971 with Harold Beauchamp Collection funds

Overview

Albrecht Dürer began the Life of the Virgin series in circa 1501-2 and completed it only in 1511, incorporating works that were probably made before he decided on a series of woodcuts, but with an overall plan in mind early on. There are nineteen different scenes and a cover-page in the series, and currently Te Papa has examples of three of them. In Albrecht Dürer Woodcuts and Woodblocks (1980), Walter Strauss suggests that several prints were made with engravings by Martin Schongauer in front of him. Dürer, however, never simply imitated others, but changed and invented anew as he worked. The first complete edition with a Latin text printed on the verso (back) of each sheet was published 1511. Benedictus Chelidonius, a Benedictine monk and theologian, supplied the texts for both the Life of the Virgin and the Large Woodcut Passion, published in the same year. The two were often bound together, combined with the reissue of the Apocalypse.

The cult of the Virgin Mary was very popular in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Gospels say very little about her life, so artists made use of apocryphal texts Speculum Historiale by Vincent de Beauvais and The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine. In his scenes, Dürer deliberately made his figures look like Germans of his own time, to make them better understood and appreciated by the public. Naturalism and accessibility are the watchwords, and these were intended to deepen devotion and reverence towards the Virgin Mary. The woodcuts presented an intimate narrative of Mary’s life, moving from such episodes as her birth and betrothal, to the annunciation and nativity of Christ, and finally to her death, assumption and coronation. Since many of the prints appeared long before their publication in book form, Dürer sold a number of them as single sheets, without the text printed on the back.

In The Flower of Paradise: Marian Devotion and Secular Song in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Oxford, 2011), David J. Rothenberg writes: 'The lower half of the scene shows the apostles gathered around Mary's tomb which lies empty. They all look upwards, where a cloud elevates Mary into heaven [The Assumption]. Above the cloud, the radiant Virgin dominates the scene, flanked by a multitude of angels and crowned Queen of Heaven by the equally radiant Holy Trinity. Dürer's woodcut is unusually elegant, but its iconographic depiction of the Assumption is entirely typical. Similar Assumption scenes showing Mary taken into heaven by angels and crowned by God were prominent all over western Europe...'.