Small Woodcut Passion: Resurrection

PANOFSKY’s first published book, which developed out of his doctoral thesis, was on Dürer’s theory of art. It was concerned in part with the relation between formalised artistic theory and the artist’s imaginative performance. Toward the end he quoted Goethe: ‘The highest thing would be so to grasp things that everything factual was already theory.’ This quotation may serve as a motto for two convergent themes in Panofsky’s work: the fusion of the subjective life of the mind with external …

Throughout the annals of early printmaking, woodcuts have tended to be accorded second-class status. Indeed, it is fair to say that over most of its six hundred year history the woodcut has served a less demanding market, and done so without the need for exceptional refinements in draftsmanship or block cutting. The many hundreds of thousands if not millions of catchpenny prints sold to adults as well as children over the centuries attest to the importance of the woodcut as an efficient, if …