Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00011073Allegory of Christian Belief
by Johann Liss
About the Artwork
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.
Inscriptions
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
Provenance
?-?: possibly Karl Eduard von Liphart, Dorpat ?-?: Reinhold von Liphart (Lugt 1758), Dorpat by 1929: Dr. Arthur Feldman, Brno, Czechoslovakia* ?1940: Dr. O. Feldmann, Brünn, Austria 1953: with Herbert N. Bier, London
Exhibition history
German Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 11-December 18, 1955). The Venetian Tradition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (November 8, 1956-January 1, 1957). Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959). Mostra Della Pittura del Seicento a Venezia. Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Venezia, Italy (organizer) (June 27-October 17, 1959). Drawings from the Museum Collection: 15th-17th Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 18-October 11, 1960). Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 11-September 10, 1963). Old Master Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 10-31, 1964). Art in Italy, 1600-1700. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (organizer) (April 6-May 9, 1965). Old Master Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 29, 1966-February 28, 1967). Venetian Drawings from American Collections. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (September 21-November 24, 1974); Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (December 7, 1974-February 9, 1975); The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (February 22-April 20, 1975). The German Tradition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 27-June 27, 1993). Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Johann Liss (German, c. 1597–1631)
- Date
- c. 1622
- Medium
- pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash; framing lines in pen and black ink
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 15.3 x 9.4 cm (6 x 3 11/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Accession no.
- 1953.6
More by Johann Liss in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00011073
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