The Dream of the Doctor

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Dream of the Doctor

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Scholars generally agree that this curious engraving represents the contemporary proverb "Idling is the pillow of the devil," a moral message against the sin of sloth. Here, a middle-aged scholar dozes before a warm stove. The devil hovers behind him and uses a fireplace bellows to kindle impure desires. Aroused by the devil’s sinful provocation, the scholar’s subconscious conjures Venus, an object of lustful temptation. Dürer’s image explores the realm of dreams and innermost thought in association with powerful female sexuality. Like many of his other engravings of this early period, Dürer uses obscure, moralistic stories to consider the female nude both creatively and intellectually. Although aimed at a primarily cultured male audience, Dürer presents Venus as a source of desire not only for the sinful idler, but for the viewer as well.

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record

Medium
engraving
Credit Line
Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
Type of artwork
Print
Department
Prints

Also in Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. The museum’s own label for these fields has not been confirmed yet, so each is named by its field in the museum’s data.

creation_date
c. 1500

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

A sleeping scholar, a crouching devil with a bellows, and a monumental nude rising from a dream. Around 1500, Albrecht Dürer packed all of that into a single small engraving. The devil stokes impure thoughts while Venus stands fully visible at the center, a winged putto playing at her feet, turning a moral warning about idleness into something the viewer is quietly drawn into as well. Dürer uses the dream itself as the argument, making the audience complicit in the very sin on display.

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.

What the image shows

A nude male figure stands beside a seated woman, both in a room with architectural details.

Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.SMH5ZQ5wC82mfE8Y.KuFyMdswJSYnViMJ8U9Rv1hBDVHyeD-6nEOnremzB2SeKRtARWeEe5Jq0_45AMKrPDw7gHN2c8iwdQmdyMmGdtcjn8G_tWJVXOL-lymWzg2WTfFkbLIXmxLXcEuZuTYy4NRZ2zpvNMw3yqoezpi0rosCFLOPPYZm5X27SM_g-M-op-B3OB_nCIFWgBM5lk3F-ESpTWN7tGIzeJ_Pq1VbAAX2LrexO5TRNWwtmdp_BLVTyhnHk-_0oXfzWpRq3Vg7kbqTgIv24XwGL-BCOLiv6-YjkCbRUV06PcoqGaypC6bn9AxDCQSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.kPEWHf1OEVqKM0yt.j9kCRAlr3oJrvaSPlinu3m4Z45u7EMPxFEW8X_W0cyEgGB4beLJ_YsfO2wMk-V4GiAzM97MDEvSlbHfBH5A5fqe-_1_qRfoNTPN5Ved-57rXNkiDvAxFoyM14WqAxFCQhsfT1zbXE_Z-i3tg65u665OEay2vaeZOHcj2vbSV3DctYz-xzS-03KTYesUyqMPHXGCFXu346UZcZvbYXHCpFUTvU0APO_wUFqMsPUxz_DRC8Vt4ySxW-53uL5d9yibMdKHE8CXRmN-kpkpF4fViELMnncuvNNQOBvwxcgZS7A
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Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Provenance
Richard Fisher (1809-1890), Midhurst, England (Lugt 2204) | Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934), London, England (Lugt 1376)
How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Cleveland Museum of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
114741
Object Type
Print
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Type of artwork” · copied as is
Creator
Albrecht Dürer
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creators (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Artist-role creator's description with life dates removed.
Culture
Germany, late 15th-early 16th Century
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
engraving
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Prints
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Tags
  • male
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field artists_tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
Credit Line
Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
Richard Fisher (1809-1890), Midhurst, England (Lugt 2204) | Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934), London, England (Lugt 1376)
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
c. 1500
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1495
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1505
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_latest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

The Dream of the Doctor

Sep 3, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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