Illusion and reality in the portraits by Georg Pencz
Georg Pencz’s picturesque portraits represent one of the brightest stages of development in the master’s work. In the 1540s, after his second Italian trip, the artist became the leading portrait painter of the Nuremberg nobility and turned to the type of monumental large-format portrait that included elements of genre painting. Pencz depicted the rich entourage surrounding a patron with the attention to nature inherent in German Renaissance art. It was a demonstration not only of the social status and affluence of his patron, but also of the artist’s skill. At the same time, the image was endowed with an inherent aesthetics of mannerism, in which notional and optical allusions, among other things, indicated the enlightenment and subtle taste of the portrayed individual. Illusion and reality combined to create a symbolic field, within which a picture should be interpreted. This trend continued into XVII century painting.