Allegory of Christian Belief
Medium
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash; framing lines in pen and black ink
Dimensions
15.3 × 9.4 cm
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Dudley P. Allen Fund
Accession Number
1953.6
Tags
male
About this 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 alb...