Cleveland Museum of Art
The Virgin Surrounded by Many Angels
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5
- Date
- 1518
- Medium
- woodcut
- Culture
- Germany
- Department
- Prints
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 124113
From LinkedCulture
In a scene of joyful celestial chaos, angels crown the Virgin Queen of Heaven while cherubs tumble playfully across the foreground. Two large angels extend a crown above her head as others offer gifts and music on either side, yet the eye keeps returning to her steady, compassionate gaze. Albrecht Dürer made this woodcut in 1518, using fine hatching and dramatic contrasts to bring order to the celebration. It captures a moment of Catholic devotion just one year before the Reformation changed everything.
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 religious scene featuring the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child surrounded by angels and cherubs.
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 this lively woodcut, Dürer evokes the Coronation of the Virgin, the last event in the cycle of prayers known as the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. She is about to be crowned Regina caeli, the Queen of Heaven, as angels and cherubs celebrate with gifts, music-making, and merriment. Dürer’s shallow use of space and symmetrical arrangement draw attention to the Madonna’s gaze, a fixed look that conveys both her attentiveness and compassion for those who are devoted to her.
The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Provenance
- with Richard H. Zinser, New York | 1945: Purchased by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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