Christ Bearing the Cross 1509

Albrecht Durer made this woodcut, Christ Bearing the Cross, using a block of wood, knives, and a press. This printmaking technique wasn’t exactly new, but Durer refined it, and elevated it to a high art form. Look closely, and you can see how the lines are made by cutting away the wood, leaving the design standing in relief. This is the key to how the image was produced: the block would have been inked, and then pressed onto paper. Woodcut is very much about stark contrasts, which Durer exploits here. The way the image has been composed, with every bit of space filled by figures, has a dramatic effect. The act of production speaks to larger social themes. Prints like this were relatively cheap to produce and widely disseminated. They were a means of religious instruction, but also a form of popular art for the masses. Durer was one of the first artists to understand this potential, helping to usher in a new era of art and mass communication.