The penance of Saint Chrysostom
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| The penance of Saint Chrysostom |
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| Albrecht Dürer , around 1497 |
| Copper engraving |
| 18 x 11.8 cm |
| Print in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Kupferstichkabinett |
The penance of St. Chrysostom is a copper engraving by Albrecht Dürer from around 1497.
description
John Chrysostom can be seen in Dürer's depiction in the background on the left edge of the picture: crawling on all fours, naked and bearded, he is shown seen from the left. His left foot is covered by a rock case overgrown with plants in the foreground of the portrait-format composition, in which a naked young woman with long, curly hair and crossed legs is sitting on a stone block breastfeeding an infant. Her lap is about the same level in the picture as the crawling Chrysostom in the background, about the upper end of the lower third. Behind Chrysostom you can see a number of trees and a medieval city with walls, towers and battlements, behind it a hilly landscape. Dürer's monogram is at the bottom of the picture, roughly in the middle near the young woman's feet.
Literary background
Dürer probably knew the legend from the work Passional or the Holy Life published by Anton Koberger in Nuremberg in 1488 : As a poor pupil or student, Johannes kisses a portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From this point on, the area around his mouth is golden and he is nicknamed Chrysostomus (χρυσόστομος), "golden mouth". At the age of 16 he is to be ordained a priest, but feels unworthy of it and instead begins a hermit existence in the desert. There the emperor's daughter, who got lost, meets him and spends a night of love with him in his cave. In repentance, he made a vow to only walk on all fours until he was forgiven. Years later, the empress gives birth to another child who refuses to be baptized. Only John Chrysostom should be allowed to perform this sacred act. The search for John Chrysostom is initially in vain, until one day hunters track down a strange wild animal. When the imperial child gets to see this creature, it pronounces forgiveness and John Chrysostom, whom the hunters no longer recognized as a human being, rises from his quadruped position and makes himself known to all. The Emperor's daughter, who has also not been seen again, is now also sought and found in the wilderness.
Another version of the Chrysostom story arose in the 14th century by mixing the legend of the saints with a Florentine poem about the penance of a nobleman who has become a robber. Here, too, there is an act of love with a princess; Chrysostom not only punishes himself with his vow of penance, but also throws the young woman into a well. He writes his confession of guilt with golden saliva. He is acquitted by a speaking baby, the brother of the violated. The princess miraculously survives in this version too.
It remains unclear whether Dürer's copperplate depicts the imperial daughter's younger brother, who pronounces forgiveness, or a child who emerged from the princess's night of love with the hermit.
Artistic role model and successor
Possibly Dürer based his composition on the work Cleopatra by Jacopo de 'Barbari . Cranach took up the motif of the penitent Chrysostom in 1509 and again around 1525. Also Barthel Beham created a trick with this topic and Wolf Huber recorded the scene in 1519. The Florentine version of the legend is represented in both the early Italian and the early German art. However, while earlier artists placed the penitent in the foreground, Dürer concentrated on the young woman and child. Cranach, too, did not focus on the penitent as a person, but on the woman, although he concentrated above all on depicting landscapes. According to a comment in an exhibition catalog, his penance of St. Chrysostom is "the only composition [Cranach] that embeds a story in a wide landscape."
reception
In 1869, Dürer's first biographer in English, Mary Margaret Heaton , stated that the young woman in the picture was more attractive than most of the other women portrayed by Dürer. She gave her a charisma, "that makes us think that perhaps Dürer's sympathies were not entirely with the repentant saint who is seen in the background."
literature
- Walter L. Strauss (ed.), The Complete Engravings, Etchings & Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer , New York ² 1973, ISBN 978-0-486-22851-8 , pp. 18 f.
Individual evidence
- ^ So Strauss 1973, p. 18.
- ↑ a b Margit Stadtlober, The forest in painting and the graphics of the Danube style , Böhlau 2006, ISBN 978-3-205-77472-3, p. 238
- ↑ Young mother with child
- ↑ Gerd Unverfetern (ed.), Torn and engraved. Graphics of the Dürer period , Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-47006-1, p. 76
- ↑ quoted from: Walter L. Strauss (ed.), The Complete Engravings, Etchings & Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer , New York ² 1973, ISBN 978-0-486-22851-8 , p. 18