Blanton Museum of Art
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Albrecht Durer
Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, circa 1497-1498

Woodcut
39 cm x 28.7 cm (15 3/8 in. x 11 5/16 in.)
Purchase through the generosity of the Still Water Foundation, 1995


Amid work on his two earliest series, the Apocalypse and the so-called Great Passion, Albrecht Dürer created a number of individual woodcuts of the same large size and style. One of these prints, The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, combines the stages of the saint's execution: a first attempt upon a spiked wheel, its thwarting by divine intervention, and a second, successful attempt at the hand of a swordsman. Dürer crowded the composition with an extraordinary amount of information; missed no opportunity for conspicuous invention, from the exploding heavens to the splendid executioner; and boasted an unprecedented variety of mark and complexity of effect. Prior to Dürer's activity, woodcut had been bound by simple conventions and popular functions. Flush with creative as well as commercial ambition, the young artist applied his singular imagination and audacious skill to the technique, single-handedly elevating it to the level of a high and personally expressive art. The success of such woodcuts spread Dürer's compositions and fame across Europe. Later he would explore other possibilities of the technique, first more pictorial, then also schematic, finally more abstract. These would dominate sixteenth-century production and, long after woodcut had returned to its basic tendencies and associations, remain the measure of artistic achievement in the technique.