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Description: | A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Wolfgang Huber. The drawing shows the figure of Christ on the cross seen from the side. Christ is wearing a loin cloth and is facing towards the right, with his head turned and lowered to look at the group of people at the foot of the cross. The figures in this group are all looking up at Christ with their arms raised in despair or their hands clasped in prayer. Behind this groups are four tall trees, one of which - positioned just to the left of the centre of the composition - has a dead body hanging from a branch and a ladder propped up against it to the left. In the right foreground is another group of figures. A woman is seated on the ground facing towards the right, and the other figures behind appear to be talking to and comforting her. In the right background is a town with mountains beyond.
Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society:
"No. 30
WOLFGANG HUBER
(Worked about 1510-1544, first at Feldkirch, but from 1515 chiefly at Passau)
THE CRUCIFIXION
Collection of Mr. C. S. Rickerrs and Mr. C. H. Shannon, London. Pen and ink on white paper. 32 x 21.5 cm. (12 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.)
Christ hangs upon a solitary cross to the left, and looks down towards his Mother and St. Mary Magdalen. St. John and another disciple stand with hands raised and eyes directly upwards to the Saviour. Instead of the customary two theives to the left and right, we see an empty cross apart, and then among the trees a criminal broken on the wheel, and another hanging from a branch of a tall fir, against which a ladder rests. It is the place of execution of common malefactors. To the right is a group of four naked figures, rapidly sketched in outline. The tree above them is also sketched with astonishing freedom, the pen being suffered to make loops in its swift passage over the surface of the paper, outlining the foliage with effective ease. The swerve of this tree to the left and the slanting lines of the ladder relieve the rigidity of those perpendicular lines that predominate in the composition.
Though neither signed nor dated, there can be no doubt that this is a fine and typical drawing by Huber. Figure subjects are the exception and pure landscapes the rule in his work, but I would point to two drawings already reproduced as offering special analogies to this 'Crucifixion'. The first is a 'Christ on the Mount of Olives' of 1526 in the Ambrosiana (photographed by Braun as Dürer). The clouds are drawn with the same rapid ease as here the foliage on the right. Christ kneels upon a platform of irregular steps with jagged edges like that on which the cross is here erected. There are the same long, thin feet, and hands without definition of the fingers. There are the same little hills with buildings on them, the same scratchy outlines to the mountains beyond. The second is a washed drawing of the Lamentation beneath the Cross, at Munich (Schmidt, 144). The composition, in this case, is more conventional, but note the treatment of the foliage, and above all that of the eyes, and the action of the woman erect and wringing her hands. The Munich drawing itself seems to be near in date to 1530, to judge by its similarity in technique to a drawing of that year at Budapest (No. 977 of the Albertina publication). But in all the known work of Huber there is nothing comparable to the present drawing in largeness and dignity.
C. D."
Technique: REPRODUCTION
Technique: collotype (print)
Reproduction by the Vasari Society of Wolfgang Huber, Crucifixion, (1932.70-30) | Source: | Manchester City Galleries | Identifier: | mcag.emu.ecatalogue.105050 | Go to resource |
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