Terminus, the Device of Erasmus (c. 1532): Art, History and Details

Terminus, the Device of Erasmus (c. 1532) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hans Holbein the Younger (German, active England and Switzerland, 1497/98–1543).

The work and its context

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

In the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536), the celebrated Dutch humanist and scholar, embraced ancient Greek and Roman literature and incorporated much of its moral and ethical messages into his own work. Holbein here conflates Erasmus’s features with Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries, who defied Jupiter by maintaining his position atop Capitoline Hill. Erasmus adopted Terminus, along with the motto concedo nulli (I concede to no one), as a personal symbol for devotion and steadfastness.

Object facts

• Title: Terminus, the Device of Erasmus
• Date: c. 1532
• Creator attribution: Hans Holbein the Younger (German, active England and Switzerland, 1497/98–1543)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 32.4 x 32.4 x 4.5 cm (12 3/4 x 12 3/4 x 1 3/4 in.); Unframed: 21.6 x 21.6 cm (8 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.)
• Collection: P - German before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1971.166

A detail from the museum

Tree ring analysis helped determine the date of this painting.

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Sherman E. Lee in memory of Milton S. Fox

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1971.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 1 (1972).
• Holbein, Hans, and Hans Werner Grohn. L'opera pittorica completa di Holbein il giovane. Milano: Rizzoli, 1971.

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.