Cleveland Museum of Art
The Offer of Love (or The Ill-Assorted Couple)
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5
- Date
- 1495–1496
- Medium
- engraving
- Culture
- Germany, late 15th-early 16th Century
- Department
- Prints
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 114744
From LinkedCulture
This 1495 engraving by Albrecht Dürer flips a popular moralizing theme on its head. Instead of a scheming young woman tricking an oblivious old man, Dürer shows the man deliberately reaching into his own purse, a willing buyer of his companion's affections. Her elaborately patterned headdress and laced bodice are etched with stunning precision, while a distant town and grazing horse fill the background. The shift in blame from her to him is exactly what makes this small print so pointed.
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 man and a woman sit together on a log, engaged in conversation.
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.
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
In the late 15th century, moralizing scenes of mismatched lovers were popular subjects for prints. In one variation of the theme, a young woman seduces an unwitting old man in order to steal his money. In Dürer’s version here, however, the male figure willingly reaches into his purse to pay for his younger companion’s affections.
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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.
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