The Virgin with the Swaddled Child (1520): Art, History and Details

The Virgin with the Swaddled Child (1520) 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:

This image is among Dürer’s most sorrowful depictions of the Virgin and Child. In contrast to earlier engravings of the subject, Dürer presents them as monumental figures. Here, the Virgin sits on a large cushion and pensively cradles a tightly swaddled Christ Child. His wrappings, closed eyes, and stiff appearance evoke his future death and his burial shroud, emphasizing the outcome of his Passion as well as Mary’s foreknowledge of the events. Dürer draws attention to the Virgin’s holiness by rendering her halo as a white orb that radiates shafts of light over the earth. Dürer’s sculptural molding of the figures and his extensive use of middle tones to create dimension demonstrates his constantly evolving style and command of the medium in his late career.

Object facts

• Title: The Virgin with the Swaddled Child
• Date: 1520
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Platemark: 14.2 x 9.6 cm (5 9/16 x 3 3/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1980.48

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.

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.