Fred Wurlitzer

Albrecht Durer's "Die Kleine Passion" Fred Wurlitzer

Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 - 6 April 1528) was a prodigious German painter and lithographer. His Kleine Passion or Small Passion was a portable devotional book of 38 leaves issued in small quarto format. It consisted of a title page and 36 woodcuts illustrating the narrative of Christ's Passion, followed by the colophon, in which the printer identified himself as "Albrecht Dürer, painter." Although some of the woodcuts were dated 1509 or 1510, the series was completed and published in 1511." Dürer had labeled his work a "small passion," because earlier from 1497 to 1510, he had created the Great Passion that had eleven woodcuts. Interestingly, the Small Passion was actually larger with 36 woodcuts. The subject matter was the same, the Passion of Christ. I have chosen doggerel to express myself in sympathy with Dürer's renditions of Christ's Passion.