Woodcut series: The Small Passion (1511)

Dürer's persistent striving with the art of painting had received new stimulus in Italy, and in his letters to Jacob Heller we hear of his hard struggle in his efforts to produce large pictures. However, the artist's imagination, pent up by his studies in painting, and also owing to the necessity of a more economic mode of life, was impelled to express itself in the woodcut. After the beginnings of the year 1509, in 1510 the production increases to five single cuts and six supplementary cuts to the Large Passion and to the Life of the Virgin, and reached its climax in the year 1511, in which appeared besides the edition of the three big works with new title pages and eight big separate woodcuts, the Small Passion with its thirty-seven woodcuts of which only three belong to the years 1509 and 1510.