The Raising of the Cross [center, left, and right panels]

c. 1480/1490

Master of the Starck Triptych

Painter, German, active c. 1480 - c. 1495

A wooden, T-shaped cross, with a man nailed to its crossbeam, is raised so it stands vertically as men and women look on against a grassy, hilly landscape in this horizonal painting. The painting is made up of three parts: a vertical rectangular panel at the center and a tall, narrow rectangular panel to each side. The people all have pale, ruddy, or tanned skin. The cross is being pushed up from behind by two men with poles and pulled up on the front side by three men pulling on two ropes. The man on the cross, Jesus, is nude except for a white cloth across his hips. Blood trickles from nails holding his hands in place, the single nail driven through both feet, and a ring of thorns across his forehead. His long brown hair hangs down over his shoulder, and he has a full, trimmed beard. His red-rimmed eyes slope downward as he looks down to the crowd below. His mouth is closed. The people in the crowd at the base of the cross wear dresses, robes, and turbans in shades of ruby red, grass green, lapis blue, pale yellow, carnation pink, and bright white. Three men push and pull on the base of the cross, driving it into a hole dug in the dirt ground. Eleven men and one child look on from our left, some with gaping mouths. One of the two men pulling on one of the ropes to our right wears tattered blue clothing, and his toes poke out of the shoe we can see. The other man there is barefoot and has a prominent hooked, red nose and a pointed beard. A red cowl covers his head over a tunic striped with lemon yellow and brown. An inscription on that man’s sleeve reads, “OHAIR.” Two men stand in the lower left corner of this panel. One looks at the cross and the other looks out at us, while pointing up to Jesus. Two human skulls and other bones litter the ground around the cross. Two more wooden crosses and some rope lie on the ground near us. Two dogs romp together nearby, next to a coat of arms showing a crowned man wearing a red robe and holding two pointed staffs. In the panel to our left, a woman wearing an azure-blue robe, Mary, interlaces her fingers and flips her hands palm-down, as she looks at the ground. Another woman in front of her kneels and holds her interlaced hands up by her face, elbows high. A woman and a cleanshaven man stand near Mary, and to our left, a woman wearing emerald green holds a cloth with Jesus’s face on it. Four more men and women look on, the women crying. In the panel to our right, a man in a red robe and a man wearing armor sit on horses. The armored man gestures up at Jesus. Two more men sit on horses behind this pair, and six stand among and in front of the group. Two men sit, one with his hands tied behind his back, near the lower right corner of this panel. The bound man is bald and looks down. The man behind him has a brown beard and hair, and looks up at Jesus. Across all three panels, the scene takes place on a smooth, dirt ground. Grassy hills rise beyond the cross to higher peaks in the left and right panels. Paths or roads wind into the distance to a town on the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up the composition. Hazy in the distance, a city wall encloses steeples and buildings, and a bridge spans a body of water leading up to the city. Gray clouds begin to tumble across the sky from our right. The sky is nearly white along the horizon and deepens to watery blue along the top edges of the panels.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

This rare example of an intact portable triptych from the late fifteenth century is further enhanced by its superb state of preservation. On the exterior wings are two of the most popular saints in Western art, Saints Barbara and Catherine, who represent the active and the contemplative life, respectively. Saint Barbara holds a ciborium above which floats a wafer of the host; she was often invoked as protection against sudden death without benefit of Communion. A brilliant philosopher, Saint Catherine stands upon a broken wheel, a reference to her attempted martyrdom, and holds a sword, which was used to behead her.

Opening the triptych reveals one of the earliest depictions of the Raising of the Cross, a subject that began to appear in northern Europe in the late fifteenth century. An account of the attachment of Christ's body to the cross and its elevation does not occur in the Gospel narratives. Rather, it grew out of late medieval piety, in particular, the religious movement known as the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion), which amplified the narrative of Christ's Passion and urged its followers to empathize with Christ's pain and suffering. Here, the event is spread over the three interior panels, unified by a continuous landscape. In the center panel a jeering crowd watches and gestures angrily as the cross is raised. For the contemporary viewer the tattered blue garments and the striped robe and red cowl worn by the men at the right would have identified them as disreputable and marginal members of society. Two very different groups of onlookers are found on the wings. On the left wing are the holy women: Mary Magdalene kneels in the foreground, Saint Veronica holds the sudarium bearing an imprint of Christ's face, while the weeping Virgin dries her tears with her light blue robe. On the right wing in the foreground the bad thief, identifiable by his shaved head and ragged clothing, awaits his crucifixion. At the top are dark ominous storm clouds that have begun to move into the center panel.

The Raising of the Cross was first owned by a member of the Starck family of Nuremberg, as indicated by the coat of arms at the bottom of the center panel. The altarpiece was used for private devotion in an ecclesiastical or, more likely, a domestic setting. The artist also can be firmly associated with the city of Nuremberg and in particular with two of that city's leading painters, Hans Pleydenwurff and Michel Wolgemut. When Pleydenwurff died in 1472, Wolgemut was quick to marry his widow and take over the workshop. The anonymous artist was almost certainly trained in this atelier, and the clear, vibrant colors, firm draftsmanship, and dynamic composition of The Raising of the Cross demonstrate his skill and importance. To the Gallery's already formidable collection of German art, this triptych adds a superb work from Nuremberg at the moment when Albrecht Dürer, who also apprenticed with Wolgemut, began his ascendancy.

(Text by John Oliver Hand, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)

On View

NGA, West Building, M-035-A


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Patrons' Permanent Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall (center panel): 66 x 48.3 cm (26 x 19 in.)
    framed (right panel): 65.4 x 24 x 3 cm (25 3/4 x 9 7/16 x 1 3/16 in.)
    framed (center panel): 65.3 x 48.3 x 3 cm (25 11/16 x 19 x 1 3/16 in.)
    framed (left panel): 65.6 x 24 x 3 cm (25 13/16 x 9 7/16 x 1 3/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1997.100.1.a

Associated Artworks

Saint Barbara [left wing exterior]

Master of the Starck Triptych

1480

Saint Catherine [right wing exterior]

Master of the Starck Triptych

1480


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Member of the Starck family, Nuremberg. John (Talbot?), 16th Earl of Shrewsbury [1791-1852], Alton Tower; gift 1839 to St. Mary's College, Oscott, England; sold through (Julius H. Weitzner [1896-1968], London) to (French & Co., New York), by 1976; purchased 1997 by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1857

  • Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Paintings by Ancient Masters, Art Treasures Palace, Manchester, England, 1857, no. 501, as by School of van Eyck.

1989

  • Kunst & Tradition. Meisterwerke bedeutender Provenienzen, Bernheimer, Munich, 1989, unnumbered, as Workshop of Michael Wolgemut.

1994

  • Lucas Cranach. Ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken, Festung Rosenberg, Kronach; Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, 1994, no. 98, as Master of the Stötteritz Alter.

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2010

  • Van Eyck to Dürer, Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 2010-2011, no. 222, repro.

2013

  • The Art of Empathy: The Mother of Sorrows in Northern Renaissance Art and Devotion, The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, 2013-2014, unnumbered catalogue, figs. 15, 16 (detail of left panel).

2021

  • Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 800-1500, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2021 - 2022, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 129.

Bibliography

1989

  • Bernheimer Konrad O., ed. Kunst und Tradition: Meisterwerke bedeutender Provenienzen = Art & Tradition: Masterpieces of Important Provenances. Exh. cat. Munich 1989. Munich and London, 1989: 70, color plate.

1994

  • Grimm, Claus, Johannes Erichsen and Evamaria Brockhoff, ed. Lucas Cranach: ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken. Exh. cat. Leipzig 1994. Regensburg, 1994: 281-283, no. 98, color fig.

1997

  • Anzelewsky, Fedja. "Der Meister des Stötteritzer Altars und Wilhelm Pleydenwurff." Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums 2 (1997): 11-12, 17, 18, color fig. 5.

1998

  • Hand, John Oliver. "Gifts and Acquisitions: German, Active in Nuremberg -- The Raising of the Cross." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 19 (Spring 1998): 4-5, repro.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 66-67, no. 49, color repro.

2009

  • Suckale, Robert. Die Erneuerung der Malkunst vor Dürer. 2 vols. Petersberg, 2009: 1:77-81, 458, figs. 106, 108-112; 2:77, no. 56, 173-176, figs. 915, 916.

2011

  • Pergam, Elizabeth A. The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857: Entrepreneurs, Connoisseurs and the Public. Farnham and Burlington, 2011: 313.

  • Hand, John Oliver. "The Raising of the Cross (Starck Triptych)." In Van Eyck to Dürer: The Influence of Early Netherlandish Painting on European Art, 1430-1530. Edited by Till-Holger Borchert. Exh. cat. Bruges 2010. London, 2011: 407-408, no. 222, color fig.

2013

  • Areford, David S. The Art of Empathy: The Mother of Sorrows in Northern Renaissance Art and Devotion. Exh. cat. Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, 2013. London, 2013: 22-23, 63, color fig. 15, 16.

Inscriptions

upper right, center panel, on sleeve of man in striped costume: OHAIR[W?]

Wikidata ID

Q20174335


You may be interested in

Loading Results