Lucas van Leyden

The Raising of Lazarus

The Raising of Lazarus, engraved by Lucas van Leyden around 1502 — when the artist was about eight years old according to the most generous chronology, or in his early teens according to the more cautious — is one of the earliest dated prints in the Lucas van Leyden corpus and a defining statement of the precocious technical accomplishment that would make him the leading Dutch printmaker of his generation. The composition shows the climactic miracle of John 11: Christ at the right with his arm extended in command; the bound figure of Lazarus emerging upright from the open tomb at the center; the sisters Martha and Mary kneeling between them; a small crowd of witnesses gathered behind. The compositional discipline and the technical mastery of the engraved line — particularly the atmospheric distance achieved through progressive lightening of the burin — mark the print as the work of a fully formed artist regardless of which dating one accepts.

David Playing the Harp Before Saul

David Playing the Harp Before Saul, engraved by Lucas van Leyden around 1503 in his Leiden workshop, illustrates the episode from 1 Samuel 16 in which the young shepherd David is brought to play music for the troubled King Saul — the moment that begins the long Old Testament unfolding of the David narrative. The composition shows Saul seated on his throne in the upper register, his head bowed in contemplation, with David standing in the lower foreground playing his harp; a small crowd of attendant courtiers fills the background. Lucas van Leyden's characteristic combination of dense crowded narrative composition and progressively atmospheric burin work, with figures in the foreground sharply outlined and figures in the back fading into soft tonal grey, marks the print as one of the technical landmarks of early sixteenth-century Northern engraving.

Susanna and the Two Elders

Susanna and the Two Elders, engraved by Lucas van Leyden around 1503 in his Leiden workshop, illustrates the deuterocanonical narrative from Daniel 13 in which the chaste Susanna is spied upon while bathing by two elders of her community who later attempt to extort her into adultery and, when she refuses, falsely accuse her of the crime themselves. Lucas van Leyden composes the scene in his characteristic horizontal Northern landscape format — Susanna in the lower right partially undressed beside her bath, the two elders in the bushes at the lower left looking on, a panoramic Dutch coastal landscape stretching into the distance behind. The print is among the most reproduced of his Old Testament treatments and a defining example of the early sixteenth-century Northern interest in the moral and erotic complexities of the Susanna narrative.

The Return of the Prodigal Son

The Return of the Prodigal Son, engraved by Lucas van Leyden around 1505 in his Leiden workshop, illustrates the climactic moment of the Luke 15 parable: the father runs to embrace his returning son who, having squandered his inheritance, has returned home to throw himself at his father's feet. Lucas van Leyden composes the scene as a small intimate group in the foreground — the kneeling son embraced by the standing father — with the elder brother visible in the deeper background tending the household and the fatted calf being prepared for the celebratory meal at the upper left. The print circulated through the early sixteenth-century Dutch and German print collections and shaped the visual treatment of the Prodigal Son parable in Northern Renaissance and Reformation devotional imagery for several generations.

Christ on the Mount of Olives, from the Circular Passion

Christ on the Mount of Olives, engraved by Lucas van Leyden around 1509 as one of the small plates from his Circular Passion series in his Leiden workshop, depicts the Agony in the Garden as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels: Christ kneels in prayer before the angel bearing the cup of the Passion, while the three sleeping disciples — Peter, James, and John — are gathered in the lower foreground and Judas with the Roman soldiers approach through the gate at the rear. The Circular Passion was a series of small round-format engravings depicting the principal Passion subjects, designed for binding into prayer books or for distribution at confraternity meetings. Lucas van Leyden's combination of dense crowded composition and atmospheric burin work translated the late-medieval Northern devotional preoccupation with the Passion into the new sixteenth-century engraved format.