Baldung Grien, Hans

The Dead Christ

c. 1511-12; pen and ink on paper; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The subject of this drawing is highly unusual. Christ is represented after the Crucifixion, as the wounds on his hands and feet indicate, but in a moment before his death, his uplifted head and heavenward gaze evidently signifying a spiritual communion with God the Father. No textual source has been identified for this unprecedented subject and it is possible that it was invented by Baldung himself. The formal source of the supine figure of Christ may lie in ancient Roman representations of dying heroes, known to Northern artists through widely circulated drawn copies.