Depicting the biblical verse (John 6: 15), in which Jesus retreats from his disciples in order to refuse a proffered crown of kingship, this scene unfolds with a cluster of figures in roughly contemporary sixteenth-century clothes, approaching from the right; they are juxtaposed against the retreating figure of Jesus, clad only in simple robes, who moves leftward away from them and into a dense forest setting at viewer left. The forest stands for his wilderness retreat, described in the text as a “mountain.” In sixteenth-century German imagery by artists such as Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Altdorfer, such undeveloped regions stand as equivalents for the non-civilized world, a refuge from habitation, often with a charged spiritual dimension (Silver 1983; Wood 1993).

The visual movement of the narrative from right to left adds an element of tension, because it runs against the grain of European reading habits in order to suggest resistance on the part of Jesus to such worldly kingship as well as his forceful retreat from his trusted followers.

The crown itself is modeled on the arched crown (Bügelkrone) of the Holy Roman Empire, worn by medieval emperors (Rosenthal 1970). Not only is this a contemporary and local Germanic reference, but it also implies a theological point about the separation of Church and state in accord with the famous biblical passage to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22: 15-22; Mark 12: 13-17) as well as the follow-up verse in John (18:36): “My kingdom is not of this world.” The walled castle on a promontory at the upper right behind the disciples suggests worldly wealth, status, and power, offered together with that crown.

Works Cited

• Silver, Larry. “Forest Primeval: Albrecht Altdorfer and the German Wilderness Landscape.” Simiolus 13 (1983): 5–43.
• Wood, Christopher. “Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape,” 128–202. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Rosenthal, Earl. “Die ‘Reichskrone’, Die ‘Wiener Krone’, Und Die ‘Krone Karls Des Grossen’ Um 1520.” Jahrbuch Der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 66 (1970): 7–48.