Like his contemporary Andrea Mantegna in Italy, Martin Schongauer was a technical innovator in northern printmaking, codifying in his oeuvre a new language of burin strokes that presented a naturalistic gradation from light to shadow, and leaving behind the more schematic engraving techniques of his predecessors. Also, as suggested by the parallel semicircular lines of the back of Pilate’s throne, Schongauer is thought to have initiated the practice of keeping the burin still while rotating the plate in order to achieve curved lines, a practice which was widely adopted by subsequent engravers like Albrecht Dürer. It was these skills that allowed northern engraving for the first time to approach the subtlety of painting, bringing a verisimilitude and psychological range to prints.

In this scene from the Passion narrative, Christ is brought before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who holds the ultimate power of life or death over him. Although he fails to find any compelling reason why Christ should be put to death, Pilate gives Christ over to his persecutors by washing his hands of him. Drawing on a familiar technique for depicting Christ’s captivity before his crucifixion, Schongauer contracts the humble yet upright figure of Christ with the twisted and bent poses of his captors, casting their faces as boorish characters.