The Jesus

Albrecht Dürer

Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World)
c. 1505 · Oil on linden panel

This painting gives us something unusual: we can see the artist in the middle of creating it.

Dürer depicts Christ as Salvator Mundi—Savior of the World. His right hand is raised in blessing while his left holds an orb representing the world. Yet while the rich blue and crimson drapery, curling hair, and deep green background have been developed in paint, much of Christ's face, hand, and orb remain unfinished. Beneath them, Dürer's remarkably detailed preparatory drawing is still visible.

Dürer probably began the painting shortly before leaving Nuremberg for Italy in 1505, during an outbreak of plague. What is particularly intriguing is that he lived for more than twenty years afterward and apparently never returned to finish it. We don't know why. It may have remained unfinished by circumstance—or Dürer may eventually have valued what the incomplete painting revealed about the process of making art.

Today it is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Now Look Again

Knowing that the painting is unfinished, look again.

Where does drawing become painting?

Does your eye respond differently to the fully realized fabric than to the barely developed face?

Which feels more alive to you—the finished or unfinished areas?

And consider something we rarely get to see in a masterpiece:

Are you looking at the artwork—or at the artist thinking?

What did you notice before you knew any of this?