Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Death of the Virgin
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-840f7214ff34
- Date
- 1510
- Medium
- Woodcut
- Department
- European Art
- Institution
- Minneapolis Institute of Art
- Object ID
- 115990
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.
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
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Gifts of funds in memory of John E. Andrus III
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