386 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



Caiaphas starts the procession to Golgotha. 1 Jesus 

 being unable to bear the cross, simple Simon, a pilgrim, 

 is forced to assist. Then follow the prophetic words to 

 the women of Jerusalem, and the beautiful incident 

 with Veronica. 2 The nailing to the cross is performed 

 with extreme brutality, and the whole process of 

 hammer and gimlet painfully emphasised. 3 As the 

 cross is raised, we have again vestiges of the Church 

 ritual in the singing of the Latin hymns : O crux, ave 

 spes unica and Ecce lignum crucis of the old cere- 

 monial Adoratio crucis 4 (see p. 293). The Virgin 

 comes forward, and, heedless of the scoffing of the 



Painting (No. 30), circa 1250 ; Master of Lyversborg Passion ; Anton Wonsam. 

 Augsburg Gallery: Wolgemuth (No. 43), 1450-1500; Altorfer (No. 47), 1517. 

 Berlin Museum: Veit Stoss, circa 1496. Wurzburg : Conrad von Thiingen's 

 grave in the Cathedral, circa 1540. Weimar Church: Cranach altarpiece. 

 Nurnberg, Gfermanisches Museum : Wolgemuth, Christ stooping from the Cross 

 to St. Bernard, circa 1488. Ramersdorf: Fresco Crucifixion, early fourteenth 

 century. 



Four Nails. Hans Burgkmair at Augsburg (No. 44), circa 1518 ; drawing 

 by Hans Baldung Grien in the Albertina, 1533 ; and quite modern pictures, 

 like Dietrich's Crucifixion at Dresden. 



These few examples seem to show that the four nails were peculiar to 

 carving, where the crossing of the knees is by no means easy technically. 

 The three nails came in with painting (yet were used by Adam Krafft and Veit 

 Stoss) ; they are more graceful than the four, and the foreshortening is fairly 

 easy on canvas. Finally, Burgkmair and Grien, not Velasquez, seem to have 

 reintroduced the four nails. 



1 B, vol. ii. p. 306 ; F, p. 217, etc. 



2 See C, p. 168 ('simplex Symon' ; compare Chester Plays, ii. p. 51, 'Symon 

 of Surrye'); B, vol. ii. p. 309 ('ein bilgem') ; D, p. 61 ; K, p. 161 ; E, p. 231, 

 etc. Compare Fig. 81 of the Schatzbehalter. I have treated the Veronica 

 incident, artistically and liturgically, at a length I once hoped to treat the 

 whole Passion, in a separate work, Die Fronica, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des 

 Christsbildes im Mittelalter, Strasburg, 1887. 



3 On the passion-play stage the holes for the hands were invariably made 

 too far apart, and a rope used to strain the arms of the sufferer. Compare also 

 Digby Plays, ii. 1. 1338 ; Chester Plays, ii. 58 ; Coventry Plays, p. 319. This is 

 represented with realistic hideousness in Fig. 85 of the Schatzbehalter. In these 

 typical passion-play woodcuts Wolgemuth renders the brutality of the Jews 

 as strongly as either Diirer or Cranach. See, for example, Fig. 81, where the 

 soldiers make mouths at the Virgin. 4 F, p. 235 ; E, p. 174. 



