Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Turkish Family
Albrecht DürerLinkedCulture matchlcp-840f7214ff34
- Date
- c. 1497
- Medium
- Engraving
- Department
- European Art
- Institution
- Minneapolis Institute of Art
- Object ID
- 47038
From LinkedCulture
Around 1497, Albrecht Dürer engraved this scene of a Turkish family he had never actually met. A turbaned man grips a crossbow in the foreground while a barefoot woman carries a nursing infant behind him, both figures set against bare, rocky ground. Dürer likely drew on secondhand costume studies rather than real observation. This print matters because it reveals less about Ottoman life and more about the fear and fascination shaping the Christian European imagination at the height of Ottoman expansion.
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.
From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record
At this time Turks claimed a large share of public attention, owing to the rappid westward advance of the Ottoman empire through conquest. Durer shows these family members as semi-savages: a partially nude and bare-foot woman, holding a baby, follows the father, a robust warrior. This unsympathetic portrayal probably reflected contemporary opinion in the Christian north. Germany, Europe
The authoritative record is held by Minneapolis Institute of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- The William M. Ladd Collection Gift of Herschel V. Jones, 1916
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Minneapolis Institute of Art and other institutions.