The Great Triumphal Car of Emperor Maximilian

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Great Triumphal Car of Emperor Maximilian

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Dürer conceived this fantastical chariot as part of a larger commission to depict Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (reigned 1486–1519) in a triumphal procession. The ruler sits enthroned in the lavish car, as Victory holds a laurel wreath above his imperial crown. Her feathered wings list Maximilian’s military campaigns. Nearly every component of the allegorical pageant—from the entourage of female attendants to the laurel garlands—has a Latin label describing honorable qualities of an ideal prince. The car rolls on wheels of Magnificence, Honor, Dignity, and Glory. Its driver is Reason, who guides a team of 12 horses with reins of Nobility and Power. Virtues of Justice, Strength, Wisdom, and Temperance, stand on pedestals arranged around the emperor. Maximilian died in 1519, before the ambitious commission could be completed. Dürer published The Great Triumphal Car at his own expense with text composed by his friend Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530).

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
woodcut
Credit Line
Dudley P. Allen Fund
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
1523

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

This woodcut was Albrecht Dürer's tribute to a dead emperor, published at his own expense four years after Maximilian I was gone. In the image, pairs of richly decorated horses stride forward, guided by female figures labeled in Latin, including Moderatio and Providentia, their reins curving in elegant lines across the sheet. Dürer designed the entire allegorical car, with wheels of Magnificence and Glory and a driver named Reason, while his friend Willibald Pirckheimer composed the Latin inscriptions. It remains one of the most ambitious printed propaganda projects of the Renaissance.

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 detailed engraving depicting a chariot pulled by two horses, with figures labeled 'Paquinaria' and 'Oenotria'.

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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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.N5vYrsyKH7HQjn9k.8jtcMo03ig4yzuFYbQq-KzKpOqz1YLjVL9iGJBhwXr5KBYtYyVZbEovp2xS-2dmtO8d3F99E8uWWzqcNLWL3puzkepLm5U0KaPyGYEegAKyKiZgOQag9WJczgA28hTwamnz-Nlc5fIMee_8Bn_a1jWviO9VJAU8cr_06Ejm-1BZvMSZTqlZcPMSznULkc3lBEt-AsAtwacWV2OnXmKdUt2Qjsh5XfVM7tQLLKXuZj8RRGsvrx04DD7NQKvq0BRhWkGkaw7cQhzJa9Ydlf9JsU8I4IWBReQztZS8qBcnJ614KeE6VnwSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.iYEOu4SRJ65bWc5X._z7krelbWW-xcEEBCV9hMp3A4d9PWnNrGmi5QzUsNC7OPzpFcppK3gSkcrTd29rtYZ30nK28sFwoBE1ea8eLN4K3_fAuL3f0PE9N81uHm55ym1XnX5TXGT9aK_-HHmiNauL0qdcHfAK4KpwoEcwbAbHno2ZrlAkDF0RuQuOqfSLiz-d86oFRZ7noZJAQaUuRmqXLgPCdExT02Le35-v_QRZV54GsYSgOLf-Ypi2aMOPZ_z_43wXXIaerSU7jxcP7PHPMToD1N0l6_N84Xtmrfo9EvezWEhoJMORzNBHGwVk
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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
with Richard H. Zinser, New York | 1945: Purchased by 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
124270
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
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
woodcut
  • 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
Dudley P. Allen Fund
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
with Richard H. Zinser, New York | 1945: Purchased by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
1523
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1523
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1523
  • 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 Great Triumphal Car of Emperor Maximilian

Aug 18, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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