Mary kneels with joined hands; the baby lies in a wooden manger.
Bible in art · Luke
The Nativity
Dürer · 1504
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Dürer engraved this Nativity in Nuremberg in 1504. Here the birth almost hides inside the building.
A half-timbered house leans against crumbling ruins. In a low shelter at the lower left, Mary kneels before the child in the manger, while in the courtyard Joseph pours water from a well. Through an arch, an angel appears to a shepherd on a hill.
From the text
- “She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger” (Luke 2:7)
- An angel appears to the shepherds in the fields nearby (Luke 2:8–9)
The artist’s own
- Joseph busy drawing water at a well
- An ox and a donkey in the stall — a tradition, not in the text
- A German house and ruins, with Dürer’s monogram on a hanging sign
Details
Mary and the child
Joseph
Joseph bends to pour water from a pail into a jug.
The angel and shepherd
Through the arch, a tiny angel flies above a shepherd.
The sign
A small sign with Dürer’s monogram hangs from the house.
Albrecht Dürer, German, 1471–1528. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., 1958.110) · Engraving · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).