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Source Description
This exceedingly rare drawing is one of only two signed sheets by Liss, who, in spite of the brevity of his career, was one of the most important German-born painters of the 17th century. Here, faith is personified as a woman with bared breasts and bare feet, symbolic of true Christian belief: plain, pure, and without artifice. She has cast aside worldly things-a crown, scepter, and book-and gazes heavenward as smoke wafts from an urn. The long inscription indicates that the sheet is from an album amicorum, or friendship book, in which drawings, poems, and autographs were collected as souvenirs of acquaintanceships. Liss may have made the drawing to dazzle an influential recipient with his inventive interpretation of a traditional religious subject.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
130904
label
Allegory of Christian Belief
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
130904
contentType
drawing
title
Allegory of Christian Belief
description
This exceedingly rare drawing is one of only two signed sheets by Liss, who, in spite of the brevity of his career, was one of the most important German-born painters of the 17th century. Here, faith is personified as a woman with bared breasts and bare feet, symbolic of true Christian belief: plain, pure, and without artifice. She has cast aside worldly things-a crown, scepter, and book-and gazes heavenward as smoke wafts from an urn. The long inscription indicates that the sheet is from an album amicorum, or friendship book, in which drawings, poems, and autographs were collected as souvenirs of acquaintanceships. Liss may have made the drawing to dazzle an influential recipient with his inventive interpretation of a traditional religious subject.
date
c. 1622
citation
rights
CC0
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
wikidata
Q80022030
creators
2957
genreSpecific
Drawing
imageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
Sheet: 15.3 x 9.4 cm (6 x 3 11/16 in.)
cul
Germany
accession
1953.6
Source extras
tec
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash; framing lines in pen and black ink
tombstone
Allegory of Christian Belief, c. 1622. Johann Liss (German, c. 1597–1631). Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash; framing lines in pen and black ink; sheet: 15.3 x 9.4 cm (6 x 3 11/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1953.6
supportMaterials
description
beige(1) laid paper
collection
DR - German
inscriptions
inscription
signed, lower right, in brown ink: Johan Liss / Mahler [illegible] / Holsati[a][masked] ; by artist, upper right, in brown ink: Alle Kunst undt widtz ist / eitel staub. / Hoch weisheidt ist ann. / Christum gelaub. ; by artist, lower right, in brown ink: Zu Rom den 19 martis Ao ["o" in superscript] 16[illegible, final two numbers abraded] ; upper left, in brown ink: + [collector's mark?]; upper right, along right edge, in brown ink: 265 [sideways] ; VERSO, upper left, in ink: 572 ; upper right, in graphite: 69 [sideways] ; center, in graphite: No. 99 al ; lower right, in graphite: Joh. Liss. [erased] ; lower left, in graphite: mj [?] ; lower left, in graphite: T5910 ; lower left, in graphite: Jah. Lys 1570-1626 ; lower right, in graphite(?): Bo. 20
citations
citation
Benesch, Otto, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Alfred Stix, Anton Reichel, and Konrad Oberhuber. <em>Beschreibender Katalog der Handzeichnungen in der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina</em>. Bd. 4. <em>Die Zeichnungen der deutschen Schulen bis zum Beginn des Klassizismus : </em>Text / bearbeitet von Hans Tietze [and others] -- Wien: A. Schroll, 1933.
page_number
Vol 4: p. 71, no. 625 (as Sammlung Feldmann, Brunn)
citation
Steinbart, Kurt. Johann Liss. Wien: Schroll, 1946.
page_number
p. 61, no. 36; illus. p. 36 (as collection of O. Feldmann)
citation
Bloch, Vitale, "Liss and His 'Fall of Phaeton,'" <em>The Burlington Magazine</em> Vol. 92, No. 571 (Oct. 1950): pp. 278, 280-282.
page_number
p. 281
citation
Benesch, Otto, "Liss's 'Temptation of St Anthony,'" <em>The Burlington Magazine</em> Vol. 93, No. 585 (Dec. 1951): 376-377, 379.
page_number
p. 379 (as formerly collection of Dr. A. Feldmann, Brno)
citation
Prasse, Leona. "A Drawing by Johann Liss." <em>The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art </em>40, no. 10 (December 1953): 215-216.
page_number
Mentioned: p. 215; Reproduced: p. 219
citation
Schilling, Edmund, "Betrachtungen Zu Zeichnungen Von Johan Liss," in Schwingel, Karl. <em>Festschrift für Karl Lohmeye</em>r. Saarbrücken: West-Ost-Verlag, 1954: 30-38.
page_number
p. 31
citation
The Cleveland Museum of Art. <em>The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook.</em> Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
page_number
Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 583
citation
The Cleveland Museum of Art. <em>Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966</em>. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
page_number
Reproduced: p. 114
citation
The Cleveland Museum of Art. <em>Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969</em>. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
page_number
Reproduced: p. 114
citation
Pignatti, Terisio. Venetian Drawings from American Collections: A Loan Exhibition, Organized and Circulated by the International Exhibitions Foundation, 1974-1975 : Introduction and Catalogue. [Washington]: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1974.
page_number
p. 22, no. 37
citation
Richards, Louise S. and Rudiger Klessmann, <em>Johann Liss: </em>Exhibition Under the Protectorate of the President of the German Bundestag, Frau Annemarie Renger, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington. 1975.
page_number
p. 26; pp. 142-143, cat. B50, Fig. 53
citation
The Cleveland Museum of Art. <em>Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978</em>. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
page_number
Reproduced: p. 134
citation
Pignatti, Terisio. Disegni antichi del Museo Correr di Venezia: catalogo. Vicenza: N. Pozzi, 1980.
page_number
p. 24, illus. p. 23, fig. 16
citation
Pallucchini, Rodolfo, and Maria Maddalena Palmegiano. La pittura veneziana del Seicento. [Venezia]: Alfieri, 1981.
page_number
p. 143
citation
Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta.<em> Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540-1680: A Selection from North American Collections. </em>Princeton, N.J.: Art Museum, Princeton University in association with Princeton University Press, 1982.
page_number
p. 202, cat. 79
citation
Klessmann, Rudiger, "Addenda to Johann Liss," <em>The Burlington Magazine</em> Vol. 128, No. 966 (Mar. 1986): 191-197.
page_number
pp. 193, 194, fig. 24
citation
Wojciechowski, Jerzy, "A Preparatory Drawing for Liss's 'Temptation of St. Anthony,'" <em>The Burlington Magazine</em>, Vol. 138, No. 1116 (Mar. 1996): 191-192.
page_number
p. 192, p. 192n7, 192n12.
citation
Klessmann, Rudiger, "Neue Funde und Betrachtungen zum Werk von Johann Liss," <em>Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst.</em> Vol. LX. (2009): 59-90.
page_number
p. 65, fig. 7
citation
Litt, Steven, "Cleveland Museum of Art settles claim over Johann Liss drawing said to have been taken by Nazis from Feldmann Collection," The Plain Dealer, May 26, 2013.
creditline
Dudley P. Allen Fund
updatedAt
2026-05-29 11:27:01.159000
sourceId
130904
dept
Drawings
coll
DR - German
med
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash; framing lines in pen and black ink
creatorTags
male
thumbnail_url
image_url
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
ec787b05d015080f