The Cook and His Wife

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cook and His Wife

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Dürer’s curious engraving relates a comical story about the exposure of womanly deception. This housewife, identified by her clothing and the key and purse at her hip, had eaten an eel that her husband was saving. Although she denied it, her pet magpie, a bird associated with idle chatter, witnessed her deviousness and tattled. In revenge, she plucked the bird’s head bare and each time the magpie saw a bald man, the bird asked whether the man had also been telling the story of the eel. Even without knowing the narrative, the wife’s calculating glance toward the viewer and her husband’s dimwitted gluttonous appearance communicates the woman’s sense of superiority, but also her cunning.

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
Bequest of Mrs. Madeleine Hamill in memory of Lawrence Hamill
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
probably 1497

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

A stolen eel, a tattling magpie, and a wife who gets the last laugh. Albrecht Dürer captured this whole comic story in a single engraving from around 1497, where the cook's dull, fleshy face is set against his wife's cool, calculating glance straight at the viewer. She holds a purse and key at her hip, the marks of a proper housewife, yet her expression gives everything away. Dürer proves that even a domestic prank can become a showcase for a master printmaker's storytelling skill.

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 and a woman stand together, the man holding a staff and the woman leaning on his arm.

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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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.rW2AT8NViZnsQpFi.gYhcmr1f3W1SFmukIjUVqXwWpnTBwmOD-Q_ZunLgODa7_1UBqvn4dETtunyAnHZEuaOlHCm-hGD80ticPtAxvXY0KVdSYqDC7ma5-BPdYsWaRO8AOyaKBE7qj8s25-q62aaVl6K_Tu8sCx1IUeFucnSiiD8hR2I2ObNYxHUcayrl7XE0sJpmkaBYXHsEekJLYRVTV_KDVMTgcSNTWgBhUbMlppNR6yjeDWgWdqRtiuQGKYd9yuah_zf8PKxMXB20k5rOF3kI3DNKUXfH6r9op3kozEKkjz-Gca_gg5CEN9LyjqOmqQSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.gPKHoHzw1z3Vb3m0.HV74lpK-SvvtpJ0vee0GRLEwqC83QNMf4Rfrzeg95pQAVkb0X1u39vkFVUPadYS8OLqltuEf9wgIzXPyAFoFdOCUVRWyRuth9_45bWJ7BBnO5ZVPRW0G1MjtWglhS8GH0AyDgHZTvWtK3u27rBXY5YGjRsYbucutUONZqcqYQLfaKiHTu18WNscZvTv-8YYP2BXLHqVUujaAyBn3bgw_DjgIsVgAlz_3aK_EEmjScKgXg9eWUbNCPUKB73PdkSATulGz65R5Za98TnNiuyRRtG2GospQoZNYDvpjpcz2
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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
127350
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, late 15th-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
Bequest of Mrs. Madeleine Hamill in memory of Lawrence Hamill
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
probably 1497
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1497
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1497
  • 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 Cook and His Wife

Nov 9, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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