The Man of Sorrows

Description

Sebald Beham renders his engraving of The Man of Sorrows in intricate detail. Christ’s blood gushes into a chalice as it becomes Communion wine, and he grasps a Communion wafer imprinted with the Crucifixion in his right hand. This sizeable wafer is meant for the act of consecration, in which visibility was vital, rather than the individual consumption of smaller hosts that would have been also been produced by the nearby host iron. A priest holding the wafer aloft broke it at the culminating moment, copying Christ’s breaking of bread at the Last Supper.

The Man of Sorrows

Hans Sebald Beham

1520

Accession Number

93549

Medium

Engraving in black on ivory laid paper

Dimensions

Image/sheet, trimmed to platemark: 13 × 8.6 cm (5 1/8 × 3 7/16 in.)

Classification

engraving

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.