THE imaginative leap from lump of wood to depicting Judas’s dangling purse at the Last Supper, or Jesus’s inert body at the Lamentation, is so huge that it is hard to comprehend. Cleverly the Holburne’s “Illustrating the World: Woodcuts in the Age of Dürer” shows both the innovative genius of Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut The Great Passion, and illuminates the tumultuous context within which he worked.

Tempting as it is to rush to the top floor up to see the star of the show, the first floor Davidson Gallery reveals the impact of printed images on political and religious thought in Dürer’s era. The Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) set the model for modern publishing with a funder, writer, and publisher, who commissioned Dürer’s master Michael Wolgemut to create the woodcuts.

As an apprentice, Dürer, it is likely, worked on two of the images in the atlas-sized volume. On display, the double-page View of Nuremberg prominently shows Germany’s first paper mill at the bottom right, together with the hilltop castle, churches, and fortified double wall of the idealised Renaissance city.

In 1535, Hans Lufft “the Bible Printer” printed the first complete edition of Luther’s German-language Bible in Wittenberg, and 100,000 were produced over the next 40 years. Luther departed from the iconic traditions of Latin translations. Changes included Noah’s ark, which was no longer portrayed as a long boat full of animals, but as a square, floating shelter. These images had incredible longevity, Luther’s Bible was still used 100 years after it was produced.

Simon the Zealot’s martyrdom by Lucas Cranach the Elder is the most shocking image. In the Shields of Saxony with Twelve Apostles (1539), the saint is shown suspended by his feet, as a swordsman vertically slices him in two. Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony commissioned the woodcuts around 1512, before the Reformation. The gruesome images were later published in editions of The Apostles’ Creed or Symbols of the Faith. Amazingly, they were later repurposed, with commentary by Luther, to teach children the “true doctrine”. Cranach the Elder and Luther were close friends, and godfathers to each other’s children.

Establishing his printmaking workshop in Nuremberg in 1495, Dürer pioneered a new form of devotional picture book: large format woodcuts, with text on facing pages. Besides employing a monk, Benedict Schwalbe, to write Latin verses to accompany each image, Dürer also employed a travelling salesman to sell his work around Europe. Visitors to the National Gallery’s “Dürer’s Journey” (Arts, 21 January 2022) will remember the artist’s commercial acumen, including networking with courtiers and merchants in Antwerp taverns, and marketing swiftly produced work.

Seven of The Great Passion’s illustrations, created between 1497 and 1500, had already been in circulation, sold separately without text. Published as a book in 1511, The Great Passion contains 11 Stations and one frontispiece (1510), Man of Sorrows Mocked by a Soldier.

Dürer was the first artist to sign all works consistently, and the first artist to make and market his own work. For the first time, text illustrated woodcut images rather than woodcuts illustrating text. He revolutionised a technology that had only existed for 100 years.

Four of the scenes in The Great Passion were created after Dürer’s second journey to Italy (1505-07) and mark a distinct change of style from Gothic to Italian appreciation for balance. In The Agony in the Garden (1496-97), a sense of space is hinted at, but is not scientifically based. Christ, overcome by grief and crying out to God, floats in the centre, his place undefined by surrounding objects.

The surface is full of lines and every speck of the plane is crowded with detail: the night sky is rendered with horizontal lines cutting across clouds, tousle-haired Peter, James, and John sleep on the ground, while a pint-sized Judas leads Roman soldiers through the garden gate. An angel offering a chalice hovers above Jesus, the angel’s cantilevered wings and billowing raiment blending into the dramatic, rocky landscape.

The Resurrection of Christ, created after the Italian trip, has less going on, with a simplified narrative, and calm, static arrangement. Space is defined, and figures are iconic. Mantegna’s influence is evident in the composition, with two sleeping figures at the base of the scene making an arched shape, which takes the eye along their legs and torso, and then looking upwards to see the resurrection. Darkness and dense lines at the bottom of the image contrast with the light of God at the top. Christ’s body is depicted as statuesque and idealised, surrounded by God’s light and framed by clouds.

“Illustrating the World: Woodcuts in the Age of Dürer” at the Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath, runs until 23 April. Phone 01225 388569.

www.holburne.org