The Power of Women: The Poet Virgil Suspended in a Basket (c. 1512): Art, History and Details

The Power of Women: The Poet Virgil Suspended in a Basket (c. 1512) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lucas van Leyden (Netherlandish, 1494–about 1533).

The work and its context

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

This woodcut is from a series depicting the power of women, a popular early 16th-century theme. The series highlights a woman’s capacity to use beauty, charm, and ruse to thwart even the cleverest men. Here, Van Leyden illustrated the cunning of the Roman emperor’s daughter. According to legend, the poet Virgil fell in love with the maiden, but she objected and punished him for his impudence. After promising to raise Virgil to her bedroom window in a basket, she left him hanging halfway. The printmaker omitted the emperor’s daughter from the scene but added the woman advising her son against such folly.

Object facts

• Title: The Power of Women: The Poet Virgil Suspended in a Basket
• Date: c. 1512
• Creator attribution: Lucas van Leyden (Netherlandish, 1494–about 1533)
• Culture: Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1935.116

Collection credit

Gift of the Print Club of Cleveland in memory of Charles T. Brooks

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "Recent Print Accessions by Lucas Van Leyden." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 22, no. 9 (November 1935): 142-145

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.