Georg Pencz

Seemingly aware of Italian portraiture, both the cool figures in a spare architectural setting favored by Bronzino (1503–1572) and the haughty directness of Titian (1485/90–1576) and Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1557), Pencz painted this group of Nuremburg dignitaries in the mid 1540s. Their physical presence invariably fills the pictorial space and is set in an architectural setting, often a corner, sparsely ornamented with classical grotesques and still life details such as glass containers in which we see reflected windows. The sitters look out at us with a boldness and unflinching realism reminiscent of Bronzino’s portraits but there is a distinctly Germanic stiffness which sets them apart. Examples include the Portrait of Jacob Hofmann (Darmstadt, Landesmuseum) and the Portrait of General Sebald Schirmer (Nuremburg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum).

At the same time, Pencz also painted allegorical female figures, notably the Allegory of Melancholy (Schloss Weissenstein, Pommersfelden) and the Reclining Female Nude (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena) which clearly alludes to the erotic, languid Venuses of Giorgione (1478–1510) and Titian. Nevertheless, Pencz refuses to jettison his essentially Germanic artistic character as can be seen in details such as the meticulously painted still life elements and the highly wrought costumes. Pencz was appointed court painter to Duke Albert I of Saxony in Leipzig but he died in 1550 en route to taking up this position.