Currently not on view
Calvary,
1647–48
Johann Heinrich Schoenfeld, German, 1609–1682/83
y1937-354
In addition to drawing on paper, artists in seventeenth-century Central Europe often painted oil sketches before creating the final work. Although artists like Schönfeld sometimes painted in a deliberately sketchy style, certain factors suggest that this painting is preparatory for a more thoroughly and uniformly executed Calvary (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg). Figures central to the Crucifixion narrative—Christ, the Virgin, John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalene—are singled out by an ethereal light, but are less elaborated than the group of anonymous figures in the left foreground. In Schönfeld’s time, such a discrepancy would be unexpected in a finished work.
Information
Title
Calvary
Dates
1647–48
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
27.4 x 49 cm (10 13/16 x 19 5/16 in.)
frame: 34.6 x 54 x 3.5 cm (13 5/8 x 21 1/4 x 1 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Count Ivan Podogoursky
Object Number
y1937-354
Culture
Type
Subject
Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry, New York (ca.? 1847/1855); Count Ivan N. Podgoursky, Boston (until 1937); gift to the Princeton University Art Museum.
- Benjamin A. Rifkin, "A 'Mount Calvary' by Johann Heinrich Schönfeld", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 31, no. 2 (1972): p. 20-23., fig. 1, pp. 20-21 (illus.)
- Pierre Rosenberg, "A propos de Schönfeld", L'Information d'histoire de l'art 18 (1973): p. 82-84., p. 82 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 93 (illus.)
