Cleveland Museum of Art
The Virgin with a Starry Crown
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5
- Date
- 1508
- Medium
- engraving
- Culture
- Germany
- Department
- Prints
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 114733
From LinkedCulture
In 1508, Albrecht Dürer used an engraving burin to capture something almost impossible, celestial light on a flat copper plate. The Virgin stands on a crescent moon, wrapped in a double aureole of sharp radiating rays, her long curling hair falling across her robes as the Christ child reaches toward her. This print connects the Madonna directly to the apocalyptic vision in Revelation 12, a woman crowned with stars delivering a son to conquer Satan. It is one of four engravings Dürer made of this subject, and the most visually overwhelming of them all.
Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
Dürer made four engravings of the Virgin and Child standing on a crescent moon. These devotional images link the Madonna with the pregnant woman of the apocalypse from chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation. The verse says that "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars . . . " appeared in heaven, delivering a son to conquer Satan—a prefiguration of Christ. In direct contrast with the crowned Virgin here, whose double aureole shines extravagantly around her figure, Dürer conceived the Madonna (1958.116) with simplicity and humility. In each he presents the dual roles of the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven and as the humble mother of Jesus.
The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.