The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1501–1503): Art, History and Details

The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1501–1503) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528).

The work and its context

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

These eight woodcuts (1959.99.8-15) progress from Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would bear the Son of God, to the events of her early motherhood and beyond. This included the joy of sharing her pregnancy with her cousin Elizabeth, Jesus’s birth, and the subsequent arrival of the magi. After Jesus’s circumcision and presentation at the temple the Holy Family fled to Egypt to avoid Herod and stayed there for several years. The seemingly out of place last scene shows a glimpse of their daily life in Egypt as Joseph continues his carpentry and Mary spins wool. The Holy Family is surrounded by angels and helpful putti and are blessed by God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove overhead.

Object facts

• Title: The Adoration of the Magi
• Date: c. 1501–1503
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany, early 16th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.8 x 21.1 cm (11 3/4 x 8 5/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1959.99.12

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Dürer, Albrecht. The Life of the Virgin. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1959.
• Richards, Louise. "The Life of the Virgin." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 10 (December 1959): 209.
• Peters, Emily J., Laura Ritter, William Griswold, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, and Koenraad Jonckheere. Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel. Cleveland, OH : Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.

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.