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The Mass of Saint Gregory
Hans Baldung (German, 1484/85–1545)
1511
- Medium
- oil and tempera on wood
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 126 x 142.5 x 8.5 cm (49 5/8 x 56 1/8 x 3 3/8 in.); Unframed: 89.2 x 125 cm (35 1/8 x 49 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Germany, Strassburg, 16th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Medieval Art
- Credit line
- Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Saint Gregory was a late 6th-century pope and one of the fathers of the early Roman Church. This painting depicts the popular legend in which Gregory once overheard an onlooker express doubts about Christ’s actual presence at the altar during mass. In response, the saint’s immense faith was rewarded by a vision of Christ surrounded by the instruments and symbols of his passion. Saint Gregory, vested in his chasuble, kneels in the center, flanked by priests who share his amazement. This painting was part of an altarpiece commissioned by Erhard Künig, a member of a charitable lay order for a monastery near Strassburg. Künig stands at the far right wearing a Maltese cross. The two wings of the altar, showing respectively Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Baptist, are in New York and Washington. Hans Baldung was both a painter and a printmaker and is regarded as one of the most gifted students of Albrecht Dürer.
