Lot 1025 Dα

The present work references a piece from Albrecht Dürer's Small Copperplate Passion series of 1512, and is a fine example of the “Dürer Renaissance” of the late 16th and early 17th century. Around this time, the works of the Nuremberg master experienced a wave of renewed popularity, were collected and appreciated again, and inspired the compositions of contemporary artists. Rainer Stüwe has attributed the present work to the Swabian painter Georg Vischer, comparing it to his “Christ and the Adulteress” in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich (inv. no. 1411). We know very little of Vischer's apprenticeship, but he is recorded in Munich in 1613 at the latest, and was accepted as a master by the Munich Guild of St. Luke in 1621, after which he became court painter to Prince-Elector Maximilian I. In his commissions for the Bavarian court, Vischer combined Dürer's compositions with the achievements of the contemporary Baroque style established by painters such as Caravaggio and Rubens, as demonstrated in the finely painted skin of Christ in this work.