Georg Pencz
Georg Pencz (also Jörg Pentz, Benntz, Bentz, Benz etc .; * around 1500 probably in Westheim near Bad Windsheim ; † around October 11, 1550 very likely in Breslau ) was an important painter , draftsman and engraver of Mannerism and will be with attributed to the two Beham brothers of the group of the Nuremberg minor masters .
Life
Georg Pencz was a journeyman ("Mahlknecht") with Albrecht Dürer and was officially appointed in 1532 to succeed Albrecht Dürer as the city painter of Nuremberg.
Georg Pencz was probably born around 1499/1500 in Westheim near Bad Windsheim . The age results from the interrogation protocols from 1525 ("in the 25th year of life"), the place from an inheritance dispute from 1555 in which Georg Pencz and his closest Benz relatives (the current spelling of the family is Benz) from (Bad) Windsheim are named. In 1514 the progenitor of this family, "Hanns Penncz von Westhenn", received citizenship in Windsheim. Until 1513 this "Hanns Penntz" (with this spelling) can still be traced in Westheim (municipality of Illesheim ), south of Bad Windsheim, on the property of the later schoolhouse.
The painter Georg Pencz first appears in the Nuremberg documents on August 8, 1523, when he acquired the citizenship of the city of Nuremberg . The fee of 4 florins suggests that his father was not a citizen of Nuremberg. Georg Pencz is said to have been involved in the painting of the town hall as early as 1521 (based on Dürer's templates).
In the fall of 1524 Georg Pencz belonged to the conspiratorial group around the reform theologian Thomas Müntzer . At this time, Müntzer wants to press his “protective speech” against Martin Luther in Nuremberg, which is on the index . The painters Georg Pencz, Barthel Beham and Sebald Beham , all supporters of Müntzer, were supposed to support this “protective speech” with pictures. These conspiratorial meetings were betrayed by denunciation and the three painters were imprisoned around January 10, 1525 , together with the Nuremberg school principal Hans Denck , in whose house the meetings took place.
On January 21, the verdict against Hans Denck fell. He had to leave Nuremberg on the same day. On January 26th, the “three godless painters” were expelled from the city because of their religious views (“ganntz gotlos und Haidnisch”) and because of attempted popular uprising (accusation of inciting “revolutionary ferment in the people”). They too had to leave the city immediately. Where the three painters stayed after this judgment is still unknown. A few weeks after this judgment, there were massive unrest and uprisings in the peasantry ( German Peasants War 1525).
From the summer of 1525, the three painters lived in (Bad) Windsheim, as various petitions show. Georg Pencz was given permission to go to Windsheim on the very day when Thomas Müntzer was beheaded in the course of the peasant uprisings of 1525. From (Bad) Windsheim, the three painters (the Beham brothers soon followed Georg Pencz to Windsheim) sent three requests to the city council of Nuremberg to return. One of these petitions was finally successful and in November 1525 all three painters were able to return to Nuremberg. While Barthel and Sebald Beham soon left Nuremberg forever, Georg Pencz stayed in the city until 1550. He was still a time-critical spirit and worked closely with the Nuremberg shoemaker poet Hans Sachs , a supporter of Luther, until the end of his life . Many of Hans Sachs' writings critical of religion and society were illustrated by Pencz.
In the years 1526 and 1527 there were again social unrest in Nuremberg. Georg Pencz is not mentioned in these minutes, as he stayed in Italy from 1526 to 1528/29. “In Italy, Pencz (entered) Marc-Antonio's school and reached his master in such a way that several pictures by the famous Italian artist ( Marcantonio Raimondi ) are mistaken for works by his German pupil (…).” Georg Pencz thus “happily connected the German Delicacy with Italian softness and breadth ”.
It was not until 1529/30 that the name of Georg Pencz reappeared in the Nuremberg documents. On May 18, 1529 he married Margaretha Graf, the daughter of his painter colleague Michael Graf. With her he had at least 13 children. Three years after this wedding, Georg Pencz became the city painter of Nuremberg and thus successor to his teacher Albrecht Dürer. His lapel, his letter of commitment, he begins with the words: "I, Jorg Benntz, painter, Burger zu Nurmberg, confess with this brieff (...)". Around this time he also changed his signature on the works of art from "IB" to "GP".
At around the same time (around 1534) Georg Pencz then created his famous ceiling painting Fall of the Phaeton in the Hirsvogel Hall in Nuremberg. Georg Pencz was thus "the first German to follow in the footsteps of the great Italian wall painters".
A second trip to Italy took place around 1539. From this u. a. reports that Georg Pencz “reserved the Pope and drew the crown more cautiously” than the well-known Italian artist Girolamo Grandi from Ferrara. Georg Pencz is still highly regarded in Italy today, as evidenced by the Catalogo completo dell'opera die grafica die Georg Pencz , published in Milan in 1978 . This catalog has also been translated into English.
In 1540 Georg Pencz was responsible for receiving the future Emperor Ferdinand I in Nuremberg with other "experienced Italian experts". The city of Nuremberg wanted to prepare a triumphal procession for King Ferdinand I "in the Welsche way" and asked experienced Italian experts to prepare it.
A local tradition in La-Tour-du-Pin ( Dauphiné ) tells that in 1541 an unknown painter returned from the north from Italy, where he had trained; on the way he fell ill on Mont Cénis and was brought to La-Tour-du-Pin; in gratitude for his admission to the pilgrims' hospital, he painted the triptych attributed to Georg Pencz.
In 1548 Vitruvius Teutsch appeared, the translation of the ancient architectural treatise into German. The ten books on architecture written by the Roman architect Vitruvius (around 84 BC to around 27 BC) deal with architecture as well as all the technical requirements for house and town construction (use of machines, manufacture of flour mills , Water pipes, sundials). Georg Pencz contributed 193 woodcuts to the German edition of Vitruvius .
The artistic achievements of Georg Pencz evidently moved Duke Albrecht of Prussia to appoint Pencz as court painter in Königsberg in September 1550 . On the way there, Pencz died in Breslau (or Leipzig ) in mid-October 1550 . With the exception of one source (Nuremberg council minutes of October 17, 1550), all other sources speak (Nuremberg Totengeläutbuch von St. Sebald; the records of the well-known Nuremberg mathematician Johann Neudörffer ; letter from the widow of the theologian Veit Dietrich to the Margrave Albrecht, kept in the secret archive von Königsberg etc.) from his death in Breslau; which means that the place of death in Breslau is very likely. Neudörffer even explains: "Died in Breslau in 1550 in the month of October with his son Egidius (who is said not to have been a clumsy painter) in one day". This circumstance should probably indicate an accident during the journey to Königsberg, which ended with the death of Georg Pencz and his son Egidius.
The most outstanding works of Georg Pencz can be found in the galleries of Berlin, Gotha, Vienna, Karlsruhe and Florence. The Dresden gallery owns three fragments of an Adoration of the Magi. The number of his engravings is 126. These show the influence of the Italian Renaissance even more than his paintings.
Works (selection)
Painting:
- The Fall of Phaëthon , 1534, ceiling picture composed of 20 canvases, approx. 560 × 1220 cm - Nuremberg, Hirsvogelsaal , (formerly the ballroom as an extension of the Hirsvogel house, building destroyed in the war, now a new building in the garden of the Tucherschloss )
- The Nuremberg field captain Sebald Schirmer , 1545, wood, 124 × 96 cm - Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum .
- An 18-year-old boy, 1544, wood, 91 × 70 cm - Florence , Galleria degli Uffizi .
- A 27 year old sculptor, 1549, canvas, 86 × 66 cm - Dublin , National Gallery of Ireland.
- Fragments of an Adoration of the Magi (3 fragments), around 1530, wood, 182 × 44 cm, or 58 × 28 cm, or 32 × 21 cm - Dresden, Gemäldegalerie.
- Saint Jerome , 1548, canvas on wood, 128 × 113 cm - Stuttgart , Staatsgalerie .
- Judith, 1531, wood, 86 × 72 cm - Munich, Alte Pinakothek
- 1557: Portrait of a man, half figure, with a strong beard, in a black dress and with a beret on his head.
- 1545: A bearded old man with half figure, sitting at a table, resting his head on his right hand and pointing with his left at a death's head.
Print:
- Triumphs after Petrarch (triumph of love, chastity, fame, time, death and eternity), six copper engravings, 15 × 21 cm - u. a. Nuremberg, Germanic National Museum
Hand drawings:
- The fall of Phaethon, Graphic Collection of the City of Nuremberg
Individual evidence
- ↑ Toni Benz: The “godless” painter Georg Pencz. In the sheets for Franconian family history of the Society for Family Research in Franconia, Volume 33/2010, pp. 7–60.
- ↑ Toni Benz: The “godless” painter Georg Pencz. P. 23 ff.
- ^ Johann Gottlob von Quandt: Directory of my collection of copper engravings. P. 64.
- ^ Nina C. Wiesner: The ceiling painting in the deer bird hall by Georg Pencz. P. 128.
- ↑ Laszlo Meszaros: Italy sees Dürer. P. 210.
- ^ Hanno-Walter Kruft: History of the architectural theory. P. 540.
- ↑ DIRECTORY OF THE v.DERSCHAUISCHE Kunstkabinett zu NÜRNBERG ... Nuremberg, at the obligated auctionator Schmidmer, 1825, 250 p., Directory of rare art collections, 1825, Google Books, online , p. 10.
literature
- Wilhelm Adolf Schmidt: Pencz, Georg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 353-355.
- Herbert Zschelletzschky : The three godless painters of Nuremberg. Sebald Beham, Barthel Beham and Georg Pencz. Historical bases and iconological problems of your graphics on the Reformation and Peasants' War. Leipzig 1975.
- David Landau (Ed.): Catalogo completo dell'opera grafica di Georg Pencz. Milan 1978 (= I Classici dell'incisione 6-7).
- Matthias Mende (ed.): Albrecht Dürer - an artist in his city. Nuremberg 2000; passim also to Georg Pencz; especially p. 288 ff.
- Volkmar Greiselmayer: Pencz, Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 173-175 ( digitized version ).
- Susanne Boening-Weis et al. (Red.): The Hirsvogelsaal in Nuremberg. History and restoration. Lipp, Munich 2004 (= workbooks of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation , vol. 113); in particular the essay by Johannes Hallinger.
- Manfred Grieb (Hrsg.): Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon. Munich 2007.
- Oliver Nagler: Six triumphs after Petrarca (after 1539) by Georg Pencz. In: Between Dürer and Raffael. Graphic series Nürnberger Kleinmeister. Edited by Karl Moseneder . Petersberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86568-571-1 , pp. 61-84.
- Hollstein's German engravings… Vol. 31, Michael Ostendorfer (continued) to Georg Pencz, comp. robert Zijlma, Roosendaal 1991.
- Katrin Dyballa: Georg Pencz, artist in Nuremberg. German publishing house for art history, Berlin 2014.
Web links
- Literature by and about Georg Pencz in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by Georg Pencz - Schleswig-Holstein Museum Portal
- Works by Georg Pencz at Zeno.org .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pencz, Georg |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pencz, Jörg |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Mannerist artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1500 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nuremberg |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 11, 1550 |
| Place of death | Leipzig or Breslau |