Allegory of Christian Belief
1622
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1622
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Allegory of Christian Belief is a 1622 by Johann Liss, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman stands with bare feet and bared breasts, holding a cross. She’s turned away from a crown, a scepter, and a book on the ground. Smoke rises from an urn beside her. This drawing is one of only two signed works by Johann Liss. The bare skin and tossed-aside riches show faith as simple and unadorned. The long note at the bottom suggests it was part of a priest’s white robe, called an alb. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how other artists used light and shadow like Liss does here.
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…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Johann Liss or Jan Lys (c. 1590 or 1597 – 1629 or 1630) was a leading German Baroque painter of the 17th century, active mainly in Venice.
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