Arm of Eve

Cleveland Museum of Art

Arm of Eve

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Arm of Eve is the only surviving preparatory drawing for Dürer’s life-size panels of Adam and Eve in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It is also one of the few surviving drawings by the artist made on Venetian blue paper, a support he began to use for his chiaroscuro studies while visiting Venice in the winter of 1506–7. With extraordinary economy of means, using only black and gray ink and a limited amount of wash and gouache for shading and heightening, Dürer suggested the grace and balance of the complete human form in this composition of a disembodied arm and hand. Such a study of a hand in ideal proportions cannot help but suggest the hand of the artist, a self-referential nod to his own abilities. The blue paper that Dürer used to make this drawing was a specialty of Venetian paper makers in the 16th century, who achieved the color by infusing the paper pulp with dyed fibers.

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
point of brush and gray and black wash, brush and gray and black wash, heightened with white gouache
Credit Line
Gift of Alan Kennedy
Type of artwork
Drawing
Department
Drawings

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
1507

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

This arm belongs to Eve, and it is the only drawing that survives from one of Albrecht Dürer's most ambitious paintings. Made in 1507 with gray and black wash and white gouache on Venetian blue paper, the arm rises from the edge of the sheet, bends at the elbow, and cradles a smooth sphere, with the blue paper itself acting as the middle tone between shadow and highlight. That single compositional choice made an entire sheet of paper do the work of three tones. The result is a study so precise it reads almost as a tribute to the hand itself, from an artist who knew the hand was both his subject and his tool.

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 drawing of a hand holding a sphere.

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.kZMpIgaP0nA7xIKA.II5iS7L6bWYxyLOeLB4zP6ZtvdDZ-M8nLzDX6-ffO0fnAmZLPYPJgnGgKe6o8wH4Y8-lkxFSwfkbUrtp5uQ6znoODkreD1_KLmy1Av2XC_lcIrUN2Ssvhlv210V9tb_wGn5H7zHh1SuSxbK1oyXxRo12ctMXB7y7qTpR2rVVrk_A5WiBxKsaJlfnHjM0TExhockz7uWoVW3nimdGMvh8FWwm7ewRe7zN1DTYJol_k8x8xzRoa2UVqBsN0L0Blvj9beqDK5Yws8Wa2h_JCMuiOF8UW1I0aDLGmR5yLL6OdBy8IDFzRASee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.J4puyJ6IQf7kgZ0I.JuPM399igQGMmwhxKtLj8ohE4hOIRnyuVNUplKnlYpLIKjr40FW8V3iCUoMjfRzcvNxF140QgxYYffAF_VlsDKqRaUZFltx_Y-a9GNZxNU0G625vwtNniSujpvPQaplp2l5I3OeuosRwjiDOsRE-hsmVz_YsDPIgZnIoibVXgk5TSh3VUycEN_jMI-C5PwYhSS0Ra47HSOyIuQtkJ7RI9KLoTLBZ8nFAJFbUzPSsiVHRo2k_v8Uu7y3EuhmjnP3TyrTuU-rJ-jeCJ-DBCvD0h7Uqw4IeyLJqOvQii2Vr9w
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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
?-1818/23: Joseph Grünling (1875-1845), Vienna (Lugt 1107). | ?-1888: Alfred Ritter von Franck (1808-1884), Vienna/Graz (Lugt 947) | ca. 1884: With Amsler & Ruthardt, Berlin | ?-1888: Ferdinand Meder, New York; his sale "with Mr. C. Klackner", New York, 1888 | ?-1899: Edward Habich (1818-1901), Kassel; his sale, Gutekunst-Auction, Stuttgart, 27 April 1899, lot 236; | 1899-1926: Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna (property of Archduke Friedrich of Austria) (Lugt 174) | ca. 1926-ca. 1938: Eugene Meyer (1875-1959), Washington, DC | 1938: with Arthur H. Harlow & Co., New York | 1938: with Walter Schatzki, New York; | 1938-1965: Frits Lugt (1884-1970), Paris/The Hague | 1965: with Richard H. Zinser, New York. | 1965-: 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
141931
Object Type
Drawing
  • 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, Nuremberg
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
point of brush and gray and black wash, brush and gray and black wash, heightened with white gouache
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Drawings
  • 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 Alan Kennedy
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Provenance
?-1818/23: Joseph Grünling (1875-1845), Vienna (Lugt 1107). | ?-1888: Alfred Ritter von Franck (1808-1884), Vienna/Graz (Lugt 947) | ca. 1884: With Amsler & Ruthardt, Berlin | ?-1888: Ferdinand Meder, New York; his sale "with Mr. C. Klackner", New York, 1888 | ?-1899: Edward Habich (1818-1901), Kassel; his sale, Gutekunst-Auction, Stuttgart, 27 April 1899, lot 236; | 1899-1926: Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna (property of Archduke Friedrich of Austria) (Lugt 174) | ca. 1926-ca. 1938: Eugene Meyer (1875-1959), Washington, DC | 1938: with Arthur H. Harlow & Co., New York | 1938: with Walter Schatzki, New York; | 1938-1965: Frits Lugt (1884-1970), Paris/The Hague | 1965: with Richard H. Zinser, New York. | 1965-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Provenance” · copied as is
Date
1507
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1507
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1507
  • 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

Arm of Eve

Oct 20, 2026 · Short

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