The Birth of the Virgin

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Birth of the Virgin

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Dürer devoted three woodcuts (1959.99.5-7) to the significant events in Mary’s youth prior to her sacred calling. His depiction of her birth recalls a contemporary birthing scene, complete with midwives, female friends, and relatives. Anna rests from her efforts in the background while an attendant bathes the infant Mary in the immediate right foreground. The religious significance of the event is made known by the presence of an angel above. In the subsequent prints Mary is presented several years later at the temple (running up the stairs), followed by her betrothal to an older widowed man named Joseph.

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. 1503–1504

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 woodcut from around 1503, Albrecht Dürer sets the birth of the Virgin Mary inside a bustling German household that his Nuremberg audience would have recognized immediately. A midwife bathes the newborn in the right foreground, Saint Anna rests in a curtained bed above, and a winged angel soars through the vaulted space overhead, bridging the sacred and the ordinary. This print, part of Dürer's Life of the Virgin series, helped redefine what woodcut could achieve, proving the medium capable of richness and detail that rivaled painting.

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 detailed etching depicting a nativity scene with an angel in a cloud above a group of people gathered around a bed.

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.QXt5D8jgNY9gwDiu.0zIDba27SOddTrWKlz8afDfWhc24QDlqeHVVuWPKr59j7ntTzXY6rHxJ3Xc4_gHwSytQjo-RuY4PrFs53cyROjtNC4JDKv-3VhsTvddOFRZYKnVgVF6bRvZpmy2NV9vrUAiuD6ym14Ce6jlew5WakREaGTZ42w7bu29q5nj8gfl2pY5jTI7IxLCwNfFDi0xrM7fBFJNRE8gZwOlP45cFD2EVp44ab3FimOqtuu-ZC3_WokvQBcn8fnbJYER0gzzMOVfyhQxHT9hAfJ5_vNP1np9vHfAfOFkM_fhqHCeqSJn7yWSE_ASee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.8MQ6Or13WTwDSXjz.d7Srj7SqLLwY2QpwRiVCkVbB0vVqNqEmZk3F7vvFWwPWdwxtVNGtLFCOxn7la-4xcXFSVlcn-stsT3t1qezj4LHinW6niKhrloC8m3JdckWDljiJ2ewkq_M0Ei-T_4j3KC0czBdtc23_pS07oQZDQZ3vPtAtKszQheiKTzea5aIdzmhCeD1jEVFydU13K-WCy7qz1FkfgpqvFAicy8r7ztVszoSJ6UgCfU9OSwrw_H1dJ3hxeXLbe2-Qd3nKUwaE6oAjqXLUqwWed7pc3AaQsIA6b6yKZ-JH6PLctxJ_0eg
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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
136188
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. 1503–1504
  • 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
1504
  • 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 Birth of the Virgin

Aug 24, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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