VELLERT, Dirck Jacobsz.

Dirk Jacobsz. Vellert was influenced by Jan Gossart early on in his career, when he began to fill his prints with Italian Renaissance ornament and classically inspired architectural settings in carefully measured spaces, as in the present print.

Dirk Jacobsz. Vellert was influenced by Jan Gossart early on in his career, when he began to fill his prints with Italian Renaissance ornament and classically inspired architectural settings in carefully measured spaces. St Luke painting the Virgin expressed in prints some of Gossart’s achievements in his paintings of the same theme in Prague and in Vienna.

This is Vellert’s last dated pane of glass. It is painted in medium to dark-brown grisaille combined with silver stain yellow in tones from golden yellow to a deep, reddish yellow.

The subject is taken from Herodotus: the judge Sisamnes, who had been guilty of prevarication, was arrested and punished by Cambyses, the King of Persia. For his crimes, Sisamnes was condemned to be flayed alive. Cambyses then appointed the judge’s son Otanes to serve in his father’s place. Vellert based this pane to a later account of the story, which states that Cambyses ordered Sisamnes’ skin to be hung above Otanes’ seat.

The Triumph of Faith belonged to a series of panes, probably six in all, which was based on the famous poem ‘I Trionfi’ by Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) describing the six triumphs of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Faith. The series is the earliest dated work of the artist.