GEORG PENCZ
CIRCA I500-I55O137 Allegory of Justice
Pen and brown ink and black chalk; H: 19.2 cm (7^9 /i6 in.);
W: 15 cm (5%in.)
87.GA.i03
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: At upper left corner, in-
scribed N° 115 in graphite; at bottom right corner, signed
and dated PG 1533 in brown ink.
PROVENANCE: Sir Robert Witt, London; Dr. and Mrs.
Francis Springell, Portinscale, Cumberland (sale, Soth-
eby's, Amsterdam, May 3, 1976, lot 83); art market, Ger-
many; art market, London.
EXHIBITIONS: Master urn Albrecht Durer, Germanisches
Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, July-September 1961,
no. 266 (catalogue by H. Rôttgen et al.); Between Renais-
sance and Baroque, City Art Gallery, Manchester, March-
April 1965, no. 353 (catalogue by F. G. Grossmann); Old
Master Drawings from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Francis
Springell, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh,
July-September 1965, no. 12.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. Dodgson, "Georg Pencz," in Old
Master Drawings 2, no. 8 (March 1928), p. 64; A. Ober-
heide, DerEinfluss Marcantonio Raimondis aufdie nordische
Kunst des 16. Jahrhunderts, unpub. Ph.D. diss., Univer
sitàt Hamburg, 1933, p. 66; H. G. Gmelin, Georg Pencz
als Maler, unpub. Ph.D. diss., Universitàt Freibourg im
Breisgau, 1961, p. 167 ; K. Oberhuber, m Recent Acquisi-
tions and Promised Gifts: Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, Na-
tional Gallery of Art, Washington, 1974, p. 42, under no.
7 ; D. Landau, Georg Pencz: Catalogo completo dell'opera
gráfica (Milan, 1978), pp. 30-32; F. Anzelewsky and H.
Mielke, Albrecht Durer: Kritischer Katalog der Zeichnungen,
Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin, 1984),
p. 85, under no. 82.OBERHEIDE (1933) DISCOVERED THAT THIS FIGURE WAS
based on a print once attributed to Marcantonio Rai-
mondi and now attributed to Marco Dente da Ravenna
(B.3o8-i[232Jv.26,4). Pencz, however, transformed the
figure from a striding Bacchus holding grapes aloft to a
female nude gripping a scale and a sword, the personi-
fication of Justice. Although Pencz's figure is the same
height as the engraved Bacchus, it exhibits subtle pro-
portional adjustments. For example the hand is higher
over the head and the face longer and more in profile, so
that a diagonal bisecting the figure's vertical axis is
formed by the hand, facial profile, and right nipple.
Prominent black chalk construction lines indicate that
Pencz regularized the figure's proportions in other re-
spects as well. The interest in proportion, the lateral view
of the figure, and her placement in the heavens suggest
that Pencz created this image in response to Durer s Nem-
esis (The Great Fortune) (B.77[9i]v. 10,7), as was first pro-
posed by Gmelin (1961, p. 167). He might also have had
in mind other proportional studies by Durer such as the
drawing of striding figures in the British Museum (inv.
Sloane 5218/115, recto, verso). As was noticed by An-
zelewsky and Mielke (1984), the scale in the Allegory of
Justice derives from Dürer's engraving Melancholia I
(B.74[87]v. 10,7). Another probable print source i s Hem-
rich Aldegrever's female allegory, Commemoration of the
Dead of 1529 (B.i34[4O4Jv.i6,8), which similarly dis-
plays streaming hair and shows the front of the body
obliquely, unlike the strict profile view of Dürer's Neme-
sis. The sculptural quality of Pencz's hatching within the
form is somewhat militated by his careful positioning of
the feet flush with the picture plane and the unbroken sil-
houette of the form against a blank ground. It is possible
that he made this design for an unexecuted print.3O 6 CENTRAL EUROPEAN SCHOOL • PENCZ