Artist: Albrecht Durer
Mrs Charles W Heaton (The History of the Life of Albrecht Durer of Nurnberg with a Translation of His Letters and
Journal and Some Accounts of His Work: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, London; 1881), in an early comprehensive
biographical work, provides the following description of this wonderful illustration:
"Here again Dürer, as in the somewhat similar compositions in the Great and Little Passion, has entirely departed from the conventional method of representing hell; indeed, I do not believe that he had any idea in his mind when it conceived this strange subject of representing the Catholic hell, or purgatory, in the meaning that was then attached to those terms; the beautiful print lying before me seems capable of a far deeper and more universal application than this.
These are not disembodied spirits, but real men and women, whom the coming of Christ sets free from the chain of their sins. The beams of divine love and pity have pierced the dark mansion in which they so long have dwelt, and gladly they accept the brother-hand that is held out to help them.
The figure of Christ here is most grand: majesty and love inextricably mingled - strength and tenderness for ever combined. But the principal idea that this figure conveys to my mind is that of Help - power to help - help to ascend from the underground abodes of doubt, darkness, and despair towards the blessed light of God's love, which shines over all His universe, although we sometimes bury ourselves in underground cells, and refuse to look out and see it ...
In this print we are now considering, it is not the grand figure of Christ, solemn and beautiful as that is; it is not the well-drawn figures of Adam and Eve, although Eve here is much pleasanter to behold than Dürer generally makes her; it is not the noble and mournful face looking out wistfully from the vaults, although this awakens yearnings of sympathy in our hearts; it is not the shapes bred of darkness that lurk around; it is
not even the great dragon curling over the arch through which Christ has entered, and poking at Adam's head with a spear - a dragon who,
"Wroth to see his kingdom fail, Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail."
No, it is none of these things, but it is the sense of something beyond these things, something of which they are but the symbols, which affects us so strongly, and awes us with the same kind of giddy feeling we experience in looking down an abyss of which we cannot see the bottom.
In execution this plate leaves nothing to be desired. It ranks amongst Dürer's most finished works, as indeed do all the plates of the Passion in Copper."
