The Four Witches (Four Naked Women)

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Four Witches (Four Naked Women)

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Dating from early in Albrecht Dürer’s career, this engraving cannot be tied to a specific narrative but may allude to the Greek goddess of the underworld, Hecate. Four nude women gather under an orb with a skull at their feet, while a ghoul emerges to their left. Three of the women could represent Hecate, who was often depicted with three faces or bodies; the fourth may be Diana, Hecate’s counterpart on earth. The nudity and allusions to black magic suggest mischief and the realm of witches. Prints offered a new medium for exploring subject matter that was deemed inappropriate in other media, such as painting.

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
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
1497

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

Four naked women huddle beneath a hanging orb inscribed with the date 1497, while a skull and bones lie scattered at their feet and a grotesque demon lurks in the shadows to their left. This early engraving by Albrecht Dürer was made when he was still in his mid-twenties, and it may allude to the triple-bodied goddess Hecate. Prints gave Dürer the freedom to explore subjects too transgressive for painting, making this one of his boldest and most mysterious works.

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

Four nude women stand in a doorway, facing away from the viewer.

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.FTYDzs4ITM4N-pVw.wzMboH74sNFn1wTObpn-7H3uxMx84g6ckerUQjie7QZhjmVAnOFbUcs2_afx7wqV5sI-hiydU8pQMznKpB5TJN42JxI3-tzdHhsJiVw2GDb4Z6fKLZdP3GAcUrLjM3q073gsk75F66aixpTdWWttncaNtlCDkdA7A6MgqBVEwJ7klok1hkZDWSskGv0ii8z-5OqOwMlrSZTdx9rjIvXWp1FXwSUQMKy4tPhw-0AniWTHbOOak7l3Um6YuMTYybX9vYEDlD3njZS6xvc3wVGg5jKAsOcq1TTTk69O9pQihh__f7pYQwSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.nxklqMOeJcakv2V5.ALnX75htjF9wmr3Pm4m1VMxLQVLX193yQMwF8pH4v5qcBdsJXrwKZxdpRB3KCnkMt3pFeAgCsi074_gdOJxbcglyCNKNw6eiMHHJOly-oGNPCXFrmdLQI51b5nKy9NoUxxrpFM-BbLtdJ7pxL-Efqu137iehb-mYc_e-7QgkD4HMCdmgwD4gx1dg7mn1X1tevMKpqXDT2Ph_-QlpdfC2STHUdvrw6e939AJ7KKqNsiNMFvUxxGSG62HSNc5qfGROYF5IqSxV378aq6YuHHVKFfbaVFcgYsxkZ1x6ll-B
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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
140237
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 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
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
1497
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1497
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1497
  • 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 Four Witches (Four Naked Women)

Aug 4, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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