The Betrayal of Christ

This exquisitely detailed, minutely rendered work was painted by a follower of Albrecht Dürer after his engraving of The Betrayal of Christ from The Large Passion of 1511 (fig. 1; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Executed on a thick copper panel, it likely dates to the so-called ‘Dürer Renaissance’, which spread through south Germany and the Habsburg territories in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, reignited by collectors who did not possess a desired Dürer and so commissioned copies from the many painters of the period skilled in this trade. Indeed, Dürer’s works were passionately admired and not only formed the aesthetic core of the northern Renaissance art collection, but held an enduring appeal through the ages, with the present work owned by Pablo Bosch y Barrau (fig. 2), who possessed one of the most prestigious collections in early twentieth-century Spain, which he bequeathed to the Museo del Prado in 1915.