Cleveland Museum of Art
The Prodigal Son
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5
- Date
- c. 1497
- Medium
- engraving
- Culture
- Germany, late 15th Century
- Department
- Prints
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 120110
From LinkedCulture
Albrecht Dürer chose the worst moment in the Prodigal Son's story, not the homecoming, but the instant he collapses in a pigsty and realizes everything he has lost. Made around 1497, this German engraving shows the young man kneeling among pigs of all sizes, face turned upward in despair, while a detailed farmyard of thatched roofs and weathered planks stretches behind him. Dürer's line work captures rough animal hides and worn timber with a precision that proved printmaking could match painting in pure expressive power.
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 kneels among several pigs in a village courtyard.
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.
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Bequest of James Parmelee
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