St. Peter and St. John Healing Cripple at Gate of Temple

This last scene of the Engraved Passion has been left out of most of the old copies preserved. Since this subject lies outside the scope of a Passion series, Dürer cannot have intended it to be the final sheet, but must have planned to add further subjects which were never completed. It depicts a New Testament episode in the Acts of the Apostles (3:1-10), in which Peter and John heal a cripple begging outside the Beautiful Gate of the temple in Jerusalem. The cripple's disease has been identified as leprosy. Despite scholarly speculation that Dürer visited Florence during his second trip to Italy, this has never been proven. Yet he must have seen a copy of Masaccio's fresco of St. Peter Healing a Cripple with his Shadow (c. 1427) in the Florentine church of the Carmine, since the composition of this engraving is so similar. Dürer's mastery of classical form and monumentality are clearly evident.