Holy Family with the Butterfly

Cleveland Museum of Art

Holy Family with the Butterfly

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-91cf98b472c5

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Dürer’s earliest engraving of the Virgin and Child theme features the Madonna seated on a grassy bench in an enclosed garden, a traditional subject alluding to her virginity. The divine presence of God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove overhead reinforces her sacred role as the mother of the Messiah, while Joseph, idly napping to the side, imparts a sense of domesticity and humanity to the scene. Because Dürer returned to this theme continuously throughout his career, it is possible to track his artistic development in engraving. For example, Joseph’s awkward proportions reveal Dürer’s relative inexperience in the medium up to this point.

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
Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin
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. 1495

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

Around 1495, Albrecht Dürer engraved this tender domestic scene, and something remarkable is hiding in plain sight. Joseph, slumped and napping to the side, has noticeably awkward proportions, visible proof that even one of history's greatest printmakers was still mastering the medium. Above the Madonna, God the Father and a dove appear in radiant clouds, while a detailed landscape of water and rolling hills stretches behind her. Because Dürer returned to this subject throughout his career, this early print lets us watch genius before it fully arrived.

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 seated woman in elaborate attire is depicted in a pastoral landscape.

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.Jh4no88EjGIAdkbh.OzpkPIAiOxLZb8BFfwAe4T5fmqRRYVXOyuQk9F5MvDqNfjBlq0nMp_faJj6lfwrup5TpR7Z6pN5ZbzzvhZlknzl3VmeIXY52oYtcFukWR03p1MCVWSA8I1Gv2QRregb65hN6A91oKLDyF46YaF2keY698xs-RiO_xcdpB2gN7di_WVXDoiPjr2uWRTgOjy1SvOLp3ixOahh6i6e0460LRKnxtqcp-iuJDWlBv1DZcdBgq--UoWE0vWMh_C_-dS1yg6Z1JJdOZCEmyuajatkBa89ZndMJtBuPCMvY3Y2cdKibasmboQSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.x6aXEqYcJbwy84oH.K6EJkY2wNzvSsAxdOd9bbecubeeUblNvqdGxTawXleGLoGoDLNtMd6Agk7yR-NqNy1GO5JuZVd944ydYYuxgK_65ns8K2JsViFsF8htdkRxEvustk_tyww5BMOxPmM7RaxREJiq9YWNEMbdtpdQF5JceIdezcM8KWmtPHYLbY6ABXwSlyB2auIodiFOvyYSYGoxPkTdn2xDVbGDnMLctln8VXcJiSDYT8u-yUdq03aHo1_Z10D3AWBo8J5qyJLVvEiPvB3GnR92wQlCL66QNGKmQLQyC9TU9fXuNmlcDaA
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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
154623
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
Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
c. 1495
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1490
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1500
  • 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

Holy Family with the Butterfly

Aug 27, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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