Hercules at the Crossroad

Cleveland Museum of Art

Hercules at the Crossroad

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In his journal, Albrecht Dürer referred to this enigmatic engraving as “the Hercules,” but the image is not a typical representation of the mythological hero’s 12 labors. The subject derives from a Greek parable, where Hercules decides between a life of pleasure or one of virtue. The moral dispute plays out here as a battle between two personifications, Virtue, wielding a club, and Pleasure, lying with a satyr. Hercules’s crossroad is a copse of trees between two paths: the ascent to civilization at left (pleasure?), or the winding river to the wilderness at right (virtue?). The rooster on the helmet of Hercules in this image may symbolize the hero's valor.

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
Purchase from the J. H. Wade 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. 1498

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

Dürer called this simply "the Hercules," yet the mythological hero barely appears in his own story. In this engraving from around 1498, a helmeted figure representing Virtue swings a club overhead while Pleasure reclines against a satyr in the lower left, and a rooster sits atop the helmet as a symbol of martial courage. The panoramic landscape behind them, with a winding river and distant mountains, frames the hero's moral choice between two paths. It is one of Dürer's boldest early experiments in bringing classical thought into northern European printmaking.

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 group of nude figures in a forested landscape, engaged in various activities.

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.vOg0u2kZ14VvWEbD.JTFJA_rrxP-_2EpJNuLvaShjHi_5NO4miT-U7bIDOUztSP48BRQKzgvAyuiZMd8YFyGTBJvCxBw1KjXqDFZTl0aP5iRHTFZoU1--787XwTRGeYLToGfFT5Ym-Lb7T6DgllBXEPCebzUSQ0sDBiD1-7yn98CnAJE3l4AdqMggGceF9y0Hao59xuZ_MMLAMkLRW-dqkrx19J7jMguaa935P9k_V159uRelaOAcdooYz93uypf1Uuw_7mY7sLGQPj-ZwoDJAcAak-Dl45CgX707OgBQ3dQypJLbFgxJ6LElhAIoJm7aZgSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.Afpe0qOJjCcFbbNd.vtt8fqsp0Mk3Tmdp4z4oCPIVnJeQemnC6T8dvffTC5x1GfEG8Ch40I95-RXwqc74fPsTnS3aRZ7ljf5NMK1FUrUqA_ys805bk58j1dsDzzSom6XpI1h0y-nBF5fNhOCPPgt3q-gA337v1-396IwGCvi_SUIqAOBAIkkmeKA9SMFbg2D26kCJQr5NeNX_l7Llj6q0dxahMuZKRWYKewqtfP0SsqjtbTDhh4dhG5pEk4iGQbYikMcbP7uCmIY1qEtYlGHR4ulZZBXYuDwvvTqPpxR5oOXogBbRNWznHFgvOw
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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
Richard Fisher (1809-1890), Midhurst (Lugt 2204)
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
136609
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, late 15th-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
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
Richard Fisher (1809-1890), Midhurst (Lugt 2204)
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
c. 1498
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1493
  • 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

Hercules at the Crossroad

Oct 4, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

Related across collections

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