Indeed, the physiognomic types, drapery styles, generally thin application of paint, and graphic approach to form are typical of Kulmbach. When first published (Helbing 1919), the painting was attributed to Hans Süss von Kulmbach, and all subsequent scholarship has confirmed his authorship. When the altarpiece was taken apart, the larger panel to which this scene belonged must have been sawn apart vertically, to split the front from the back, and then cut horizontally through the fictive framing element. In addition, saw marks across the back suggest that the panel was originally decorated on both sides, and was therefore part of a movable wing. That the painting is a fragment of a dismantled altarpiece is indicated by the remains of a gray fictive molding at the top, which originally marked the boundary with another scene above. In a divergence from both Dürer and earlier examples, the Museum’s panel omits the standard central mound marked with impressions of Christ’s feet, which alludes to the Mount of Olives, where the event occurred. However, the Museum’s Ascension departs from Dürer and returns to an earlier tradition in the symmetrical placement of Peter and Mary in the central foreground, a common feature of fifteenth-century depictions. Also, the low angle of vision, which creates a dramatic upward lift appropriate to the subject matter, and the strong foreshortening of the apostles’ upturned heads appear to have their source in Dürer’s woodcut. The general stylistic debt to Dürer is undeniable. Its biblical source is the Acts of the Apostles (1:9): 'While they beheld, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight.' Since 1921, when The Met acquired this work, scholars have noted that the composition borrows from Albrecht Dürer’s Ascension in the Small Passion woodcut series. This Ascension iconography, which emphasizes Christ’s departure by showing him leaving the pictorial space, emerged in art about the turn of the first millennium.

Only his feet and lower legs are visible. This painting shows Christ rising to heaven above a compact group of the twelve apostles and the Virgin Mary.

Christ ascension into heaven