Fred Wurlitzer

Albrecht Durer's "Die Grosse Passion" Fred Wurlitzer

Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 - 6 April 1528) was a prodigious German painter and lithographer. His Grosse Passion (Grosse Leidenschaft) or Great Passion was a portable devotional book issued in small quarto format. It consisted of a title page and 11 woodcuts illustrating the narrative of Christ's Passion completed over a period of 1497 to 1510. Later Dürer created the Small Passion that was actually larger with 36 woodcuts. The subject matter was the same, that is, the Passion of Christ. But the Small Passion expanded the earlier Great Passion with numerous other depictions including Christ before Pilate and Herod. It seemed Dürer felt his Great Passion was incomplete. The Passions cover the time period from the Last Supper to the Resurrection. I have chosen doggerel to express myself in sympathy with Dürer's renditions of Christ's Passion.