The Holy Family with the Mayfly

1495/1496

Albrecht Dürer

Artist, German, 1471 - 1528

Printed with fine black lines and velvety black shading on off-white paper, a woman sits holding a baby as a bearded man sleeps nearby in a landscape in this vertical engraving. In the center of the composition, the woman sits with her knees angled slightly to our right, but she turns to look down at the baby, held in her arms to our left so they are almost chin to chin. She has hooded eyes, a straight, a short nose, thin lips, and a slight double chin. Long wavy hair falls behind her shoulders, and her dress has a high neckline and voluminous sleeves and skirt under a cloak. Facing the woman in profile, we see the child's chubby arm, leg, and cheek, and his eyelashes are silhouetted against the blank white paper. The woman and child sit on the low, wood-plank wall of a trough-shaped container planted with grasses and weeds. To our left, the sleeping man leans one arm up onto the wall and tips his head back, eyes closed. Hills roll back to a structure with a single-sided, steeply pitched roof to the left, and a waterway winds into the distance to the right. A bridge connects the two areas of land and leads to buildings on the farther bit of earth. One person stands and propels a low boat with a long stick and three sailboats are in the water in the deep distance. In the sky above and tiny in relation to the others, a bearded man wearing a robe is shown from the waist up in a bank of clouds. Just in front of him, a bird has its wings spread and rays below that reach down toward the woman. The man holds one hand up, palm facing out with the first two fingers raised, and holds an orb topped wit ha cross with the other hand. The artist signed the print with a lowercase letter d tucked between the long legs of an uppercase letter A at the bottom center.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    engraving on laid paper

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    sheet (trimmed to plate mark): 24 x 18.6 cm (9 7/16 x 7 5/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.3.3453

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Meder, no. 42


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Richard H. Zinser, Forest Hills, NY); purchased by Lessing J. Rosenwald [1891-1979], Jenkintown, PA (Lugt 1760b and Lugt 1932d), 1940; gift to NGA, 1941.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1956

  • Selected Prints from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, City Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, 1956.

1970

  • Albrecht Dürer, 1471-1528: A Study Exhibition of Print Connoisseurship, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1970-1971, no. 2B.

1997

  • Six Centuries/Six Artists, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1997.

Bibliography

1932

  • Meder, Joseph. Dürer-Katalog; ein Handbuch über Albrecht Dürers Stiche, Radierungen, Holzschnitte, deren Zustände, Ausgaben und Wasserzeichen. Vienna: Verlag Gilhofer und Ranschburg, 1932. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.

2001

  • Schoch, Rainer, Mattihas Mende, and Anna Scherbaum. Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Munich, 2001: vol. 1: no. 2.

Inscriptions

in plate, bottom center: Ad [artist's monogram]; verso, lower center, in graphite by a later hand: B 44

Watermarks

bull's head (Meder 62)

Wikidata ID

Q3944475


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