Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

Trimmed to within the border, approximately 4mm missing at the top and bottom and 2mm at left and right. Faded and dirty. A series of large tears have been repaired on the upper left edge, above Saint Severinus's head, between Saints Poppo and Otto, and running from the inscription below Saint Poppo to the middle of Saint Otto's chest. A rectangular section comprising the left half of Poppo's alb and the inscription beneath his feet has been replaced with a fragment from another impression. The print has been inlaid into a pale brown mount printed with a double border on the inside and outside edges; this has then been laid down onto a sheet of heavy grey laid paper (trimmed away on the left and right edges of the mount).

The print depicts eight saints associated with Austria, each identified by the inscription at their feet. They are, from left to right: Saint Quirinus, archbishop of Lorch, in his episcopal robes and holding a book and crozier; Saint Maximilian, in episcopal robes, holding a crozier, sword and martyr's palm; Saint Florian, wearing armour and holding a lance with a banner and a shield, both bearing a cross; Saint Severinus, dressed as an abbot and holding his abbot's staff and a bible open at John I.1-2; Saint Colman of Stockerau, dressed as a pilgrim, holding his pilgrim's staff and a noose; Saint Leopold III, dressed as a king, holding a sceptre and a shield which appears to bear the arms of Austria (gules a fess argent) quartered with his own (azure five eagles displayed or); Saint Poppo, in episcopal robes and carrying a crozier; and Saint Otto of Freising, again dressed as a bishop and carrying a crozier and a book. The print originally depicted only the six saints on the left, cut by Dürer in 1515; the two right-hand saints were added two years later by Springinklee: the print's composite nature is clear from the original block, preserved in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. The absence of the 46 lines of Latin verse which were originally printed below the saints, and the irregularities in the haloes of Saints Severinus, Colman, Leopold and Poppo indicate that the state is 2.e or later (the inaccessibility of the watermark and fact that the borders are missing makes the precise state impossible to determine).

Ruskin first catalogued the print in 1872, as no. 70 in the Rudimentary Series, one of the series of Dürers in the second section of the third cabinet in the Rudimentary Series (devoted to 'Greek and Mediæval design'). It remained in the same position in his 1878 rearrangement of the series, where Ruskin described how the print displayed Dürer's 'very highest qualities', and his abilities at portraying old men (as opposed to women or angels); every student was to copy saint Florian or one of the bishops. These are similar to the views he expressed on the print in Modern Painters (vol. V, pt ix, ch. 8, § 15 = VII.371-2), where he also reproduced the figure of Saint Quirinus (vol. V, fig. 100 = VII f.p. 372) - although, as the left border is clearly visible in the reproduction, probably not from this impression.