Here Cranach presents a conventional image of the Passion, representing the Crowning with Thorns (John 19: 2) within a claustrophobic, closed space, in which Jesus is assailed by tormentors, who gesticulate wildly while his own hands are tied. Their grotesque features indicate their evil natures, a commonplace contrast to the passive suffering of Christ in German Passion iconography. Here, as elsewhere, such images of the tormentors often use anti-Semitic caricatures to represent Jews expressly as the enemies of Christ.

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Works Cited

• Marrow, James. Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979.
• Trachtenberg, Joshua. The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983.
• Mellinkoff, Ruth. Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
• Schreckenberg, Heinz. The Jews in Christian Art. New York: Continuum, 1996.
• Merback, Mitchell, ed. Beyond the Yellow Badge: New Approaches to Anti-Semitism in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
• Obermann, Heiko. The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
• Merback, Mitchell. The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel. Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1998.