Christus in der Vorhölle

Unknown artist

In 1512 the artist copied Dürer’s engraving “Christ in the Vorhölle” in the technique of etching and slightly enlarged compared to the original, but took over the motif peculiarities. An archway, which is divided over the width of the leaf, is used as a way of accessing hell, and is guarded by whimsical hell. Just Dürer, Hopfer uses the architectural transition as a composition of the rescued, Adam and Eve and Moses are already behind the passage, and the unfortunate. Christ himself surrounds a ray loriole. Unimpressed by the heavy door that drops into purgatory next to him, he bends down to pull John the Baptist out of hell by the wrist. Instead of the Dürer monogram, Hopfer’s sign and the Augsburg Pyr are integrated into the representation, while a dating is missing. Later deductions of the etching bear the number “184” of the Nuremberg publisher David Funck, who owned the record in the 17th century, numbered and distributed deductions.