The Virgin and Child with the Pear

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Virgin and Child with the Pear

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Dürer portrays the Virgin and Child on an outing away from the city in this relatively casual moment in which they rest beside a tree. As the Christ child looks directly toward the viewer to bestow a blessing, his young mother tries to redirect his attention to the pear in her hand. Here, Dürer emphasizes the natural actions of a mother trying to distract her child. Although Mary knows his holy mission and tragic destiny, she still attempts to prolong her child’s joyful youth with innocent amusements. Dürer demonstrates his further technical and artistic development in this medium through the subtle overall tonality he achieved with light and shadow, particularly in the sky and Mary’s clothing.

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
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in honor of William Mathewson Milliken
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
1511

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

In this 1511 engraving by Albrecht Dürer, a mother holds out a pear to her child, hoping to catch his eye, but the Christ child turns instead to bless the viewer. The contrast between her quiet, human gesture and his divine attention is the whole tension of the image, held in a single small print. Dürer's fine crosshatching builds a soft atmospheric glow across the sky and the heavy folds of Mary's robe, pushing copper engraving further than almost anyone had before.

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 seated woman cradles a child under a tree, with a landscape in the background.

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.UTqS5Zu-06TrAx0G.REyH_-bdn7jZrXK1fHHgjS42yKwKBpHMNiqa9VwhGtL3chGuC7w3YjZ3DRktFsIWBfg7qNUiAlqGfJmqCXCLgUeiO2IUkpfB7Rj_O1W7f-Tp6ZsvvR1u1RGDcp1TPY2LFOLs3lkXJLrabJ3y_vxUB5s0WWCSUhiESIYofzZgte1R3y9Duvzk24qEFzJahh0FgBe0erUCwY-zUoE1gn6n-PkA3NJh8yI5kW8Z-n1r9oUHzrYCITjcQtbdw6TSKkA515npP2ZKvafkr-GO4WQl8uF4W7VBhK-jXVqEs-m8FqTXyHhBQgSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.SKrnPztgoEHJ542z.Qg0o8zNjZ4PgCIydViVgg8Xk3An1_3EmndUQGcm1ZmQSy7rgsv0F88jqPrw6vtU83IM3nZXha1hfFNdnBPJIyo-QGtaoX2KAK9tfVBdagZ5PuXxFt1EAgdmlSpc-Ua2sokISK8uKp8DM1RF3CXi_F3-pbegqSV-sfJhrvv6NBxV1h87ZTMBrqBJAyGqvV4d8N15dlwt7A-ENR5KHXgp8UJtSCDCmJ5VnEDD77yd45Dl14GDpJ1c5Nb5exc8n0UoIxkJ7S7lajqV89zEsDwox5zrD6uf4GNY-4xWXfiY
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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
136141
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
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
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in honor of William Mathewson Milliken
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
1511
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1511
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1511
  • 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 Virgin and Child with the Pear

Aug 22, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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