Lamentation of Christ

Albrecht Dürer · 1500

Lamentation of Christ - Albrecht Dürer

A goldsmith lost his wife in 1500 and asked Dürer for a painting of grief. At its foot, tiny and kneeling, the family still keeps watch.

The story behind the painting

This Lamentation of Christ, also called the Glimm Lamentation, is an oil painting on panel by Albrecht Dürer, made around 1500 and now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. It was commissioned by the goldsmith Jakob Glimm as a memorial to his first wife, Margaret Holzmann, who had died in 1500. Dürer was then working in Nuremberg, where he had set up his own workshop on returning in 1495, and where in these years he was also producing large and ambitious religious woodcuts.

What to look for

The dead Jesus is held by Joseph of Arimathea and surrounded by the holy women, among them an aged and distraught Mary. On the right, three standing figures rise along a diagonal: from the top, Saint John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus. The last two hold vessels for the balms used to prepare a body for burial. Look also at the bottom of the panel, where the donors appear: Glimm, his three children and the dead woman, painted far smaller than the holy figures. The panel measures about 151.9 by 121.6 cm.

Meaning and intent

The picture joins two kinds of mourning. Above is the sacred grief of Christ's followers; below is the private grief of a Nuremberg family. By painting the donors small, Dürer keeps the hierarchy clear, yet their presence turns the scene into a family prayer. Margaret Holzmann, who had just died, kneels in the same space as the mourners of Christ, so that her husband's loss is placed within the larger story of death and the hope of burial and resurrection.

Legacy

For centuries viewers could not see the panel as Dürer made it. Later repainting had covered parts of it, and only when this was removed in 1924 did the original figures of the donors and the dead woman reappear. The restoration gave back the painting's true purpose as a memorial. Today the Glimm Lamentation hangs in Munich as an early example of Dürer's painted religious work around 1500, and as a record of one family's grief.

Lo sapevi?

Wikipedia · Wikipedia: Albrecht Dürer · Wikidata

L'artista

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

religious art · man · Jesus Christ · German Renaissance · Bavarian State Painting Collections

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