- Museum number
- 1997,0712.68
- Description
-
Presentation of Christ to the people.
Pen and brown ink, with grey wash applied at a later date.
- Production date
- 1504 (after)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 265 millimetres
-
Width: 181 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Lit: E. Schilling, 'Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen', NF, iv, 1954, pp 18-20, fig.3.; 'Ten German Drawings' museum pamphlet, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1958; J. Rowlands, 'Rubens: Drawings and Sketches', exh cat. British Museum, 1977, no.47; R. Schilling (ed) 'Die von Edmund Schilling gesammelten Zeichnungen', 1982, p.211, p.25, no.6; J. Rowlands 'German Drawings from a private collection', exh.cat London and Nuremberg, 1984, p. 17, no.10
This belongs to a group of outline drawings copied by artists in Dürer's workshop after the master's series of highly finished drawings on green prepared paper known as the 'Green Passion' (Vienna, Albertina; see Friedrich Winkler, 'Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Dürers', vol. II, Berlin, 1937, no.308). It is made on the same thin paper with a trident watermark as a further copy in outline of 'Christ nailed to the Cross' (Schilling, op cit, 1954, p. fig.2; Sotheby's Hong Kong, 4 April, 2017, lot 3028). The grey wash on the present sheet (considered optimistically by Schilling and Rowlands to have been added by Rubens) was surely added by a later owner of the drawing to give volume and depth to an otherwise unremarkable outline drawing of Dürer's composition. A further copy in pen and ink dated 1524 of 'Presentation of Christ to the People' is in the Universitätsbibliothek, Erlangen (Winkler, op.cit.1937, Appendix Pl.V).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1958 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Ten German Drawings
1977 BM Rubens no.47
1984 Feb-Sept, London, Washington and Nuremberg, German Drawings, no.10.
- Acquisition date
- 1997
- Acquisition notes
- In 1997, the Museum acquired on the death of Mrs Rosi Schilling the majority of a collection of mostly northern Old Master drawings assembled by her late husband the curator and later drawings dealer and adviser, Edmund Schilling (1888-1974). Schilling was born in Germany and came to Britain in 1937 after the rise of the Nazis. He was prominent as a specialist in German Old Master drawings and his widow’s bequest in his memory was predominantly made up of studies that he had collected in this field. Given its importance, the Museum accepted the bequest for public benefit in good faith, and has afterwards researched its history, insofar as it has been able. There remain however many works in the bequest with uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45 and the Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of these works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1997,0712.68
