Kruisiging

This woodcut depicts Christ on the cross with the INRI title above his head, set against a background of dense foliage. To the left, the Virgin Mary stands in a state of mourning, while Saint John the Evangelist looks upward from the right. At the foot of the cross lies a skull and a small tablet bearing the date and the artist's monogram.

Dürer’s work often applied the principles of divine proportion to the human form, reflecting the Renaissance Neoplatonic belief that the human body is a microcosm of the divine. The skull at the base refers to the tradition that Christ was crucified over the grave of Adam, a symbolic link between the 'Old Adam' and 'New Adam' central to Christian Kabbalah.