print
- Museum number
- E,4.98
- Description
-
Sudarium of St Veronica; two angels holding the cloth depicting the face of Christ. 1513
Engraving
- Production date
- 1513
- Dimensions
-
Height: 100 millimetres
-
Width: 139 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Entry from Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy, exh cat BM 2002, no.4:
'Dürer had worked intensively during the years up to 1513 on his series of Passion prints, but the natural association of St Veronica with the prints of the Engraved Passion, to which it would form an appropriate tail-piece, is precluded by the unusual horizontal format. Dürer himself viewed it as a single sheet print, when he mentions it, as 'Veronicum', in his diary of the journey to the Netherlands. On two occasions in August 1520, he gave impressions away as presents (see Goris and Marlier, pp.62f). However the most striking feature of the print as subsequent artists such as Dürer's follower, Sebald Beham, noticed and many commentators have indicated, is the similarity of the frontal gaze of Christ to Dürer's self-portrait of 1500 in Munich. As Panofsky noted, "the features of the Saviour bear an unmistakeable resemblance to Dürer's own". It is one of numerous occasions that Dürer associated the idea of his image with that of Christ. Vasari's description of the self-portrait painted on cambric, which the artist sent to Raphael as a gift in about 1515, bears a curious resemblance to the idea of St Veronica's sudarium.'
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1971 BM, Dürer, no.181
2000 Feb-May, London, National Gallery, 'Seeing Salvation'
2002-3, Dec - March, London, BM, Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy' no.4
- Acquisition date
- 1799
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- E,4.98