Coat of Arms with a Skull

Cleveland Museum of Art

Coat of Arms with a Skull

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In this visual allegory, Dürer creatively entangled themes of love and death. The hairy wild man, a traditional medieval figure of virility, lust, and aggression, plays the role of lover to a maiden dressed in alluring clothing. The skull on the fanciful coat of arms is a bold reminder that vanity and illicit desire carry a mortal price.

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
John L. Severance 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
1503

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

What happens when a coat of arms, a symbol of honor and pride, is crowned with a human skull? In this 1503 engraving, Albrecht Dürer places a fur-covered wild man beside an elegantly dressed maiden, the two of them flanking a heraldic shield bearing that stark skull at its center. The pairing is a deliberate moral warning, beauty and lust set against the certainty of death. Dürer's own monogram sits quietly at the lower right, claiming one of the most unsettling prints of the early sixteenth century.

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 woman in elaborate attire stands beside a shield with a skull and a winged creature.

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.FdcmElJXVGo6eDDm.wH88gE4pr9d-3HeOgH6YmOghC1jfMrREu8nFN9sEp5voL878L85EOeaUqYD9HYVwSdEsD-GA8vOcQx2_seF1Y-4N90Wwq-KhmcDnbIluqPWz58_X8enRDxLqFiV-7Q646D3sStXEEj6qfV0ic3hn13OaoLqrx4FSS8zOlbh2MebzfrWbacaN6rsGOaX7CPDBaneump5BGKPGaQoQ7xpM3gplQh77fYEwK_SNDRUTBvDKbuLiZWUUDzdGSRb__geJBxrOW0--PzhcCYSx_Ck8X4XV0kKrghj3LaAvAXnh9nOYtfDtKgSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.DHpi-HagM2Kv-lmV.b9-vHWc2CjusR9UieeYdhRnVoBZHFvneQBJlfKLLpf3Fnmv2-ZElwwAGS8UgnQFL_1sxl5vrMa1i2HPDWZEtMEM_wtxNCaoxKcA-72hsVULPMw3LPVB10k2O6xN8vOPLB26U69vcAtzMP_59oMEsNKxztXPnu_Aa7R4_FYXFv-ltbA26pUMeArvQS8SzGcWwoozSA9g0_LOrGZesh35cjq_OqaAed7TW2ZKzPBf8BrHQCEIKxKVWdQr_tmDAAdlSAMbPAZbxhgdn-O594tCwXdjqmid9jQQXJnNzPPs
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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
Pierre Mariette, 1667, Paris | Alfred Hubert, Paris | Pierre Mariette (1634-1716), Paris, inscription (Lugt 1789), verso, lower right, in pen and brown ink. Alfred Hubert (died 1908), Paris, stamp (Lugt 130), verso, lower left, in black. John Charrington (born 1856), Shenley, England, stamp (Lugt 572), lower right, embossed. purchased from (William H. Schab)
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
131200
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
John L. Severance Fund
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
Pierre Mariette, 1667, Paris | Alfred Hubert, Paris | Pierre Mariette (1634-1716), Paris, inscription (Lugt 1789), verso, lower right, in pen and brown ink. Alfred Hubert (died 1908), Paris, stamp (Lugt 130), verso, lower left, in black. John Charrington (born 1856), Shenley, England, stamp (Lugt 572), lower right, embossed. purchased from (William H. Schab)
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
1503
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1503
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1503
  • 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

Coat of Arms with a Skull

Aug 20, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

Related across collections

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