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 is no ordinary royal portrait. Albrecht Dürer's 1523 woodcut shows Emperor Maximilian I enthroned on a fantastical chariot, surrounded by allegorical figures with their virtues spelled out in dense Latin labels across every surface. The wheels beneath him represent Magnificence, Honor, Dignity, and Glory, while Reason itself holds the reins. Maximilian died before the work was finished, so Dürer published it at his own expense, turning an incomplete imperial commission into one of the most ambitious prints 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

{ "alt": "A detailed illustration of chariots being pulled by horses, with figures in classical attire.", "long": "The image depicts a detailed illustration of chariots being pulled by horses, with figures in classical attire. The chariots are adorned with decorative elements, and the horses are harnessed together.

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.pGg9ECPraLQ67a4m.bs2a9d1gpWy1uepYOMtBnnYpi2JSTRTfm4y3-RB4-zinKxUAsrL0Hj7m6oKxxVBo65cGF1SI2JQRyyu9zVDF5EO1VM6T0Pe4mnCPHg6dyZtrFUwv3hGCAPwpTShmLOLzokesG0pc0Mzwd8e-8FxiXp3p34Af3ax7NBeOMso6tYjYNyXdFuZC9oRaeBdI1lWzV5GSW5qxa9VjNg1t4dzFStpTiRWywySp5NGFbWB_RCLOoaKpT6yGHCSEncwXyMQMvzPaT8X5LdLMGmPYoFzIdNxe9pri2JUPA6nCKwWrsxn-YHGenwSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.5q0P4ScoqWgLFfFA.eCHKZ3w2hKZ0oKcU7c8KpBWsWRTk9XAGcJk8FZ8ei-lnxySRKzNgDyfiXpFTRXtkfjuslWfXKyacoLAFvzMh9j6rtPZpftIQ-NjRupkiKa_fR-Ok_HynTNX5WrRAkQj_7KEtTJm9WMz9dDQ-NFL40eIc054SFUkC9BLCOWWnBfNESH_kTpcz2DQ1y4HcONIOHMRJyUageCJaIMNzqvTaiDcEx29aA6mEgCyz-ETq5WH1lE2K3zLAJPeX9ywfo1tDJLA7Dg2Tb7KgH6ud7w0oFg90ib9LcRmCp61VrvpdPRg
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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
124273
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 22, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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