Four Naked Women

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Four Naked Women

Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-840f7214ff34

From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record

As the year 1500 approached, fear of God’s Last Judgement intensified. Given society's fear of women, it was but a small leap to the label of “witch.” In 1496, Albrecht Dürer’s godfather printed his second edition of Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches' Hammer), a handbook for detecting witches. It said women's insatiable desires made them throw in with the devil. Dürer’s 1497 engraving hints at conspiratorial mischief as four powerful nudes loom above a skull and bone, while a demon menaces at left. The puzzling O.G.H. on the globe may stand for O Gott hüte (O God protect) or perhaps Orcus, Gehenna, Hades (Hell in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek). 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
1497
Artist
Albrecht Dürer
Department
European Art
Credit
The William Hood Dunwoody Fund
Medium
Engraving

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

In 1497, Albrecht Dürer engraved four powerfully built nude women crowded into a tight interior, a skull and bone at their feet, a demon peering out from flames at the left edge. Above them hangs a sphere marked with the cryptic letters O.G.H., whose meaning still isn't settled. That same year, Dürer's own godfather was reprinting the era's most infamous witch-hunting handbook. What makes this engraving so haunting is that it never tells you whether these women are innocent or guilty.

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.

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.WuLDKzOrM5kVJhxW.sXLQQPQRrso2MLIGeWjUfn2OYD-gt8-v_S8xvW2JWDYWho3NjJfMtcb036wvPqETNlssaOjVDeogaNEyo_cvPzeKIpbKaKvYgQTNJyEBS-88HrKzciAXP8Vt0t5s29NmO_m7XmlzTmEOUluKgWstch6DOV2Camrxs-q84x0gSe4joFt3RFmM90TlLNvEUA28xRI6JyQnSDOUjQyD6jmbHVrnWsI6u_sz5N2TAaNfMMO7EV3olfG3YFoNVbeKsgMnxqkJRwxpY18MBgSee at Minneapolis Institute of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.ez4Q5zzplGAQU5iT.BvKamb3X_xw7N8piO-SSDAZK3v6DRyaEKGx1h8LqouXsrqUrz64fohNvCVV8LvOkFRh3iCP0rq6S-c26NufVz_hBo_Jf4wczN2LHXgjCs-xtTnAJInx5MCRdVRdAJ4Wr1x6E6c5bzlhAzD-Q-XKMQk68_9mreZQ99i2R6tThXXYrDF9cTepCsiJqE1vV3Wr8SoeOHbkTxk-tyU77TfT-UDhtn0ljxgnVAOzH96wzYlYn4ocVjJf1k2knfgy1wdvO_ylcfax88MbnQjbP0fE6
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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
43386
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
Engraving
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Medium” · copied as is
Department
European Art
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Credit Line
The William Hood Dunwoody Fund
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Credit” · copied as is
Date
1497
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · copied as is
Begin Year
1497
  • Minneapolis Institute of Art field “Dated” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field
End Year
1497
  • 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

Four Naked Women

Nov 12, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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