Passionstafel, linke Tafel: Kreuztragung Christi

Thoman Burgkmair's Passionstafel depicting the Kreuztragung Christi — Christ Carrying the Cross — is a panel from a Passion series by this Augsburg painter, elder brother of the more famous Hans Burgkmair. Thoman Burgkmair, documented in Augsburg in the late fifteenth century, produced altarpiece paintings and panels that reflect the Augsburg school's synthesis of Flemish influence with the Swabian late Gothic tradition. His Christ Carrying the Cross follows the processional narrative of the via dolorosa through Jerusalem, with soldiers, crowd, and the exhausted Christ forming a multi-figure procession across the panel.

Christ staggers under the weight of the cross, surrounded by soldiers and crowd. Burgkmair uses the Swabian late Gothic idiom for the crowd types and drapery, while showing Flemish influence in the narrative clarity and attention to individual expressions. The processional movement drives diagonally across the picture plane.