Swiss antiquarian Heribert Tenschert has identified and put up for sale an extremely rare first edition woodcut of Albrecht Dürer's "Ecce Homo" from 1498, part of the artist's famous Large Passion series. Only two other confirmed examples of this first printing are known to exist, making this discovery a significant find in the art world.
When Albrecht Dürer began creating designs for woodcuts in the late 15th century, intending to sell them as large-format single-sheet prints, art history took a dramatic new turn. Although Dürer had learned techniques from Martin Schongauer, he elevated the woodcut medium—previously used primarily in the newly established book printing industry—to an entirely new level of quality. His declared goal was to rival the superior reputation of copper engraving through detailed precision and sophisticated line work, an art form in which Dürer was already considered a master.
The woodcuts Dürer produced starting in 1495, beginning with his Holy Family with Three Hares, were immediately recognized as sensational achievements. Among these works were seven sheets of a Passion cycle that Dürer would not complete until more than a decade later in 1511, when he added five additional motifs and printed texts on the reverse sides of the sheets to market the collection as a complete book. The earlier prints of the seven original sheets were produced without text and are extremely rare. Until now, only two authenticated examples of the Ecce Homo representation were known to exist.
The newly identified third example, confirmed as an original first-state print from 1498, is not being sold individually but as part of the complete Large Passion series, named for its large format. Heribert Tenschert, a passionate antiquarian who abhors the dismantling of related print collections, refuses to separate the Ecce Homo sheet from its historical context, which can be traced back to the early 19th century when this specific Large Passion was first documented in a Swiss collection. Tenschert himself acquired the collection in 1989 but only recently recognized the significance of the Ecce Homo sheet it contained.
Nine of the other twelve sheets in the collection were printed in 1511, which is significant in itself given the enormous success of Dürer's cycle led to multiple posthumous reprints, though these later editions were again produced without text on the reverse. Initially, the three text-free sheets in the collection were assumed to be later prints. However, Tenschert discovered two distinctive features on the Ecce Homo print that are documented in scholarly literature as appearing only in the first edition: a missing section on a column edge in the upper right and an omission in the belt of a boy figure in the lower left.
Tenschert is now offering his complete Large Passion collection for 225,000 Swiss francs as part of his catalog "Wunderkammer 1 - Heart of Bibliophilia: Highlights from the Mirror Cabinet of the 16th Century." The Ecce Homo sheet can now be considered even older than previously thought. True to his perfectionist nature, Tenschert continues searching for better examples than the two posthumous copies to make the entire series even more pristine, though a potential buyer might already possess such pieces.
