The Crucifixion

Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were popular activities in the North. The many pilgrim accounts described Calvary as a rocky, inhospitable place. Albrecht Altdorfer chose to heighten the immediacy of the Crucifixion, however, by placing it in a fictional German landscape. In time he would create the first pure landscape prints in art, but here he fuses his humanistic delight in nature with subdued religiosity.