Cleveland Museum of Art
The Circumcision
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5
- Date
- c. 1504–1505
- Medium
- woodcut
- Culture
- Germany, early 16th Century
- Department
- Prints
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 136175
From LinkedCulture
Around 1504, Albrecht Dürer packed an entire ceremony into a single sheet of woodcut paper, proving that lines carved into wood could rival any painting. Beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling lit by an elaborate branching candelabrum, dozens of individually rendered faces press together around the infant Christ during his circumcision. This print is part of Dürer's celebrated Life of the Virgin series, and it set a new standard for what printmaking could achieve in northern Europe.
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 large group of people dressed in medieval attire gather inside a church-like structure.
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.
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.
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Provenance
- ?–1959: (William H. Schab Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1959–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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