The Raising of the Cross

Wolf Huber drew studies of heads for this altarpiece and dated them 1522, and those sheets are what date the painting. The pointed top shows where it once sat, as the crowning panel above the shrine of a large winged altar. Two more scenes from the same altar, Christ on the Mount of Olives and his arrest, are now in Munich. An altar of that size needed a rich patron, and the museum suggests Duke Ernst of Bavaria, who had governed the diocese of Passau since 1517. Here the cross is being hauled upright, seen at a steep angle, with bodies overlapping and shoving against one another. Huber carries the strain into the animals as well. The horses have bulging eyes, and the dog in the middle of the foreground wears the same look as the men raising the cross.