Pyramus and Thisbe (c. 1510): Art, History and Details

Pyramus and Thisbe (c. 1510) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hans Wechtlin (German, 1480/85–after 1526).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In Metamorphoses, written by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–AD 17), the parents of Pyramus and Thisbe forbid them to marry, so the young lovers conspire to meet at a mulberry tree beside a spring. Thisbe arrives first, but flees when she sees a lion fresh from a kill. She accidentally drops her veil, which the lion bloodies while playing with it. When Pyramus arrives, he finds the bloody veil, falsely concludes that Thisbe had been killed, and plunges his sword into his side. Here, Thisbe discovers her dead lover. Wechtlin borrowed the figures of the star-crossed lovers from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, but changed the natural spring into an ornamental fountain topped with a statue of cupid.

Object facts

• Title: Pyramus and Thisbe
• Date: c. 1510
• Creator attribution: Hans Wechtlin (German, 1480/85–after 1526)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: chiaroscuro woodcut
• Collection: PR - Chiaroscuro
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1950.396

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry S. “Woodcuts by Hans Wechtlin.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 2, Part 1 (February 1953): 30–33.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.