The Nativity

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Nativity

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

These eight woodcuts (1959.99.8–15) progress from Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would bear the Son of God, to the events of her early motherhood and beyond. This included the joy of sharing her pregnancy with her cousin Elizabeth, Jesus’s birth, and the subsequent arrival of the magi. After Jesus’s circumcision and presentation at the temple the Holy Family fled to Egypt to avoid Herod and stayed there for several years. The seemingly out of place last scene shows a glimpse of their daily life in Egypt as Joseph continues his carpentry and Mary spins wool. The Holy Family is surrounded by angels and helpful putti and are blessed by God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove overhead.

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
c. 1502–3

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

Around 1502, Albrecht Dürer carved this nativity scene into a woodblock with such precision that the crumbling timber framing and roofless stable look like a real ruin he had studied outside Nuremberg. The Christ child rests in a basket held by a wingspread angel, while shepherds crowd through an arched doorway and three angels tumble across the upper sky. Part of his eight-print Life of the Virgin series, this woodcut proves that stark ink on cut wood could rival painting in depth, texture, and emotional weight.

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

Angels fly above a rustic stable where a nativity scene unfolds.

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.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

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.joPeTKnHYF0KYFX8.77v8LeNslQsLH-RxzcC26oAIBesAaMVuwCwr9TIXqnVY5sU9VUSgiY-xJ8wiCuEF-et_lhtSg7L0Zhe579bdBM60RcT87oaJBFVA2BZP8tRESoL0jQJpgQeB31UYQAk9fUdE7hTsCdYE5l73naCYby25quIzwJued-dcK4Y00-VV-kE6qGehjN2ZFMQykHD1k9ufu1A6XuNocHrGqM_fbxpckIpDjgSyR9wyZl2RYomAu1eOWUrFx66VaTHbTmn-MF_uz780P6UdF5h6KHfoZKrz3lcN8C8BV6Q38sc2txTTMxea6gSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.BjRx_GioK5THM8Jw.2sqFjfjP7iUhRYZZDcG63lNYe2-8Y1I_wVRlOsIo7xlIpI25ERFpDWlZWQo3PVEtzzsUmu2fuVHQcED5mzIrY4XsMEQrok22beGCcjF8j9qJRsf3xYOyxzJEy0sBZuzlgKxyU-1UbQ39vRK-CepJpLCAK98rT5OXryU7HKWXx3q8zD63lLl1uQpco3P8NRnksyx_Vg1UNT2WdThR9LKavRyAdUc9RlHiykKnwyyrmOqqH3bNNw2k6j799-SonJHdsWLISeLV1Gkf2fqaiJh02Vt2xQDm09rQPRwGTt10oq3e
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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
?–1959: (William H. Schab Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1959–: 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
136174
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
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
?–1959: (William H. Schab Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1959–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
c. 1502–3
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1502
  • 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

The Nativity

Oct 26, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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