Deposition

Deposition from the Cross, one of the Seven Sorrows polyptych panels from around 1494, shows the body of Christ being lowered from the cross in the traditional scene that combined the culmination of the Passion narrative with the maximum expression of the Virgin's grief. Dürer's treatment belongs to the late medieval tradition of Andacht — devotional meditation through contemplation of suffering — that was the foundation of northern European religious art. The precise physical rendering of Christ's body and the emotional expressiveness of the mourning figures around him combine the German devotional tradition's intensity with the technical mastery of a young painter who had already absorbed the best of Flemish and German altarpiece practice.

The early panel reveals Dürer's developing compositional skills, with figures arranged in the compressed, emotionally intense manner typical of late Gothic German painting.