The Death of the Virgin

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Death of the Virgin

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-840f7214ff34

From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record

The Death of the Virgin is a meticulously printed pre-publication impression taken from a woodblock prepared for Albrecht Dürer’s elegant illustrated book, The Life of the Virgin. Twelve apostles attend Mary on her deathbed. Some pray; some read. One holds a censer, another a tall staff topped with a cross. John the Evangelist removes the burning taper from Mary's hand as she peacefully falls still. Peter, wearing a miter symbolic of his new role as leader of the fledgling church, blesses her with an aspergillum which has been charged in the pot of holy water held by his assistant. Light enters the room from the right, adding to the perspectival space and giving the figures full dimension. We are in a sacred place; so, the men have removed their shoes—Dürer gives us a fragmentary view of one discarded piece of footwear shoved beneath the bed. With this woodcut and others of similarly high quality, Dürer fused the intricacy of German art with the structure and airiness then flourishing in Italian art. Germany, Europe

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Minneapolis Institute of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Minneapolis Institute of Art’s catalogue record

Dated
1510
Artist
Albrecht Dürer
Department
European Art
Credit
Gifts of funds in memory of John E. Andrus III
Medium
Woodcut

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Minneapolis Institute of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

A single discarded sandal tucked beneath Mary's deathbed tells you everything about how carefully Albrecht Dürer thought through this scene. In this 1510 woodcut from The Life of the Virgin, twelve apostles crowd around her canopied bed, John lifting the burning taper from her hand while Peter in his miter offers a final blessing. This pre-publication impression captures the woodblock's lines at their sharpest, and it marks a turning point where German precision met the open, light-filled perspective Dürer brought back from Italy.

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 people gathered around a table, seemingly engaged in a ritual or ceremony.

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.

The authoritative record is held by Minneapolis Institute 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.Uwrm4117MmlPB4Pb.EyOHF9YUTzV1TyF540NGsf1OqWHwOyrOmdcUZ7D9Ct43h1uI6ir7Za_nCIqVevvLodkGOHXZsvyjJYW1ijm26rI7ogaHxZDVlkzdyOK6RdQZHm7fWjwiT6GqodTgYb03J7fnDLHyoDqUBJ-i9KNa1LNfi2r9dw9TbkIU4il6MRFILdVTozzaVHcLjt3Zsxpx2wye3DiEiRDoxWsiaigeIsgsPEYWl3S4jQF768jjlWIwILTdU3JC9Qh2MlQbXhwWLE93W0ts6MMgQKJC6gSee at Minneapolis Institute of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.KtJ6d_cam_pEZ5tK.5duNz0gDH4L8Y2vIax5bghTTZngj0h1rgYsEMeTlZZeSTyST5RMa-v7ll-ofl4YObzvRzhEtiFR6O9asXl5egSsGMTWPuTpws5QDrkgf7d3mAeLCK79_QR6vLQWQutUd8piRy3J4cgMApv2TO4HRfP4rAirQox7SqV7UdjCjhkbrwPS5AjTI1i71vv8ezEn7UVJbvy8LFCnpGnlMVRjKYr1Q-BNvBZzrXyhU8saqhrqYZjLl4X5sCyDDXJAfkJsUBAk6-HBTRbLJLRaEIZYAPE9Q
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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 Minneapolis Institute of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
115990
Object Type
Prints
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Classification” · the first available of several museum fields
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Object Name” · the first available of several museum fields
Creator
Albrecht Dürer
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Artist” · copied as is
Medium
Woodcut
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Medium” · copied as is
Department
European Art
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Credit Line
Gifts of funds in memory of John E. Andrus III
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Credit” · copied as is
Date
1510
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · copied as is
Begin Year
1510
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field
End Year
1510
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field

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 Death of the Virgin

Nov 10, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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