Nemesis

Cleveland Museum of Art

Nemesis

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

According to the Latin poem that inspired this engraving, Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, had the “power to crush the arrogant minds and triumphs of men and to confound their too ambitious plans.” Ready to dispense judgment, Nemesis hovers formidably above the clouds that separate her from the insignificant town below. As in the poem, here Nemesis has her traditional attributes—a bridle for punishment and a goblet for reward—but Dürer conflated her with Fortuna, the goddess of fortune, who balances on a sphere to symbolize the unpredictable, topsy-turvy nature of fate.

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 Mrs. Ralph King
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. 1501–02

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

Albrecht Dürer's engraving Nemesis, made around 1501 to 1502, fuses two ancient goddesses into a single hovering giant. A winged female figure balances on a sphere above the clouds, holding a jeweled goblet in one hand and a bridle in the other, punishment and reward offered at the same moment. Far below her, a precise Alpine town sits in miniature scale, dwarfed and exposed. This merger of Nemesis and Fortuna was Dürer's own invention, and it remains one of the most commanding images of fate ever put to copper.

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 winged figure holds a chalice while floating above a cityscape.

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.IOw-AGe0acv9deyd.PZK2itSjbzGn4oHQ85QRX2KQ7_QHC_yyFUGHXzDsb33rMCyEp8-FZKN_c1Rj3lTe6QSEc_BujWALXh9FvEHFFifJ12-5vhiljLRg33H6Dv3QDpLDYLx4dpQ2cowi4PK-kfcA6i_FGapnH_gvubPYUfLLFqOEDHgef_o-pdJaBI1uIQnNxQ2Ttwgx4nwgN-TqYPXEpkveJVZHVc1bhPWgNw0w1TznwBItHKVHWIOlDJUa-So-DTn1gogw_okGd2uvnIj_WXLRr6Sd8jGsKyIcMFIA8xC6Txa6W53TYsFTvsdEbhZDoQSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.Ld8YQC7-58sv7f6n.dqwr_jexp4svWz4w8APWJGgFKPZeZ8VwY5DbZli60gOy8hh2-qT-SNLyM9vEuMnJwOxncQxTue73k2Y5xkwlqdTM63w4cRVvwH6t3yPzBiCpDPFmUe54TCcBz81HhVeuw8QvOHF9oAUYWeP4tbedVPm1SA4fumE-sWgzfSSZ8-MJkWyjjZb1MjKmdItuN3R8prettlyejOFriNLPhIjv9GTPQbQO_m6DumyAOJgzn0VwcpKeYcUu0dT2l8UbvQJlmhKc2CFDA1KEB58oLE_tuS5f_XV4NoSpvIirXFGTqQ
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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
?-1943: Fanny Tewksbury King [1867-1949], Cleveland Heights, OH | April 26, 1943: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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
122919
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, 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 Mrs. Ralph King
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
?-1943: Fanny Tewksbury King [1867-1949], Cleveland Heights, OH | April 26, 1943: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
c. 1501–02
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1496
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1507
  • 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

Nemesis

Sep 7, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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